The Brave Little Toaster 2
by TornadoWeirdo
Summary: A sequel to the animated movie The Brave Little Toaster, without talking animals or road trips to Mars. And this time, it isn't just a summary.
1. Rise and Shine!

**Rise and Shine!**

* * *

><p>It was a cool, crisp morning. The dawn was descending onto the fog-obscured buildings of a city. Car headlights rushed through the fog, and then out of the gray emerged a college campus.<p>

Through the three-story window of a dormitory, light shone, illuminating particles of dust. From the inside of the window, a toaster sat by a shining kitchen sink. The light met a worktable that was covered with all sorts of blueprints and books. An orange lamp watched proudly over the heap.

Lastly, the light approached a bed, which had a person sleeping underneath its covers. Next to the bed was a small desk, where a clock radio stood. As the light hovered over the person's head, the radio suddenly turned on to make an important announcement.

"And what a beautiful sunrise folks! News to all you slugabeds out there: you are truly missing this phenomenon of Mother Nature. Sixty-eight degrees, mostly sunny skies, and a plethora of juicy headlines – it appears the stock market is bound to give another break for Hockeytown and Mr. Shiller is being forced to mitigate it to the press at the hour! Oh the humanity!"

There was some rustling in the bed. A hand reached out from under the covers and slammed the radio off. The hand drooped down.

"Ugh, dumb radio," a voice muffled.

The person finally arose and kicked away the covers. As he started dragging his feet along the floor, the radio switched right back on and began playing "Early Morning Rock."

Ignoring the music, the person noticed that an electric blanket was sitting on his clothes at the foot of the bed. He made a grunt and tossed the ragged thing out of the way.

Next, he had just put a slice of bread in the toaster and was impatiently waiting for it to pop up. He had even set out a plate for it.

"Come on..."

He then decided to go and find his favorite baseball cap in the closet. Having pulled the lamp along to help him, he wanted to turn its light on, but was having trouble doing so.

"Cheap lamp... where's that switch?!"

The person went over to the bathroom. He was in the middle of brushing his teeth and combing his hair in front of the mirror when he saw smoke from behind. He instantly realized that he had left the bread in the toaster.

"...Oh no."

He ran out to the toaster and popped up the toast. But the toast had been burnt black.

"Errr... of all the no-good... ARGH!"

After that mishap, the person was trying to put his clothes on. However, he soon got tangled in his sweater and couldn't see. Walking backward in blindness, he found himself tripping over the cord of a vacuum cleaner and tumbling down with it. Now flat on the floor, he didn't feel like moving. The radio ended "Early Morning Rock."

"Ow."

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. A voice called from outside.

"Hey Jay! _Jay!_ You in there?"

Jay grumbled and got up on his feet again, leaving his sweater stuck on the vacuum's handle. The voice kept calling. "JAY!"

He made it to the door and opened it. He saw a bespectacled young man standing right there at the doorway, carrying some luggage.

Jay yawned. "Oh hi Rob."

"Hi," Rob replied, eyeing his tattered roommate. "Uh... glad to see you're awake."

"...Yeah. So tell me, how'd that 'engineering expedition' go?"

"You mean my _trip_? It was okay. Could... you let me in please?"

Jay was deliberately blocking Rob from the room. "Oh, heh-heh." He hesitantly stepped aside to let him in.

Immediately upon entering, Rob dropped his things, and threw his hands in the air. "Ah COME ON! You left the place a pigsty!"

Sure enough, the room looked like an absolute mess.

"It's not _that _tragic..." mumbled Jay, plopping down on the bed.

Yet Rob continued his rant. "Look at this! You got wrappers and crumbs and stuff all over the floor!"

"Sorry Mom."

"Yeah, you'll say that now, 'til you have to go... where again? Bernalillo, in _three days?_"

Rob dropped his suitcase on the floor next to the closet where the orange lamp had been left standing.

"Trust me, I've got it taken care of..." Jay claimed, as he and Rob walked out of the room momentarily.

Once the place was nice and quiet, the lamp came to life.

"Whew boy, THAT was harsh," said Lampy, rubbing the side of his head with a plug.

Hearing this, Toaster awoke and leaped off the kitchen counter. Blanky, who had been roughly thrown on the bed, crawled down toward Lampy.

"The Master doesn't seem to like the other master very well," Blanky perceived.

Lampy agreed with a chuckle. "Yeah, I've been suspecting the same thing."

"Wait guys." Toaster walked up to them, chuckling as well. "Look, just because the Master's angry at him, doesn't mean he doesn't like him."

"Are you sure?" questioned Blanky naïvely.

"Of course! They just got off on the wrong side of the bed, that's all."

"Seems they're ALWAYS off on the wrong side these days." Kirby drove up to the group and shook Jay's sweater off of him.

"Eh, it's probably just stress," Toaster reasoned.

That's when Radio was seen hopping to the edge of the bed and looking down upon his comrades. "Ya wanna know what I think? That Jay fella really knows how to hit the hardball each workday – ace on the fringe! Ted Williams is putting down his nailbat in respect!"

"Right..." Kirby started, "only we _don't _wanna know what you think."

Lampy perked up all of a sudden. "HEY, listen! They're coming!"

Toaster let out a quick gasp. "Get back into position!"

With that every one of the appliances made a speedy retreat to his station and resumed lifelessness.

Rob and Jay soon reentered the room carrying a bunch of toolboxes. Rob was still scolding Jay.

"And another thing: if you're gonna be looking at weather patterns, you might wanna think about reading that Manfielder's meteorological whatchacallit all the way through."

"Won't be a problem," Jay answered plainly. "I'll be mapping the constellations, not watching them."

Rob walked on over to Kirby and plugged him into a wall outlet. "Well make sure you've brushed up on everything, for Pete's sake..."

As he started up the vacuum cleaner, Jay set Rob's toolboxes on his worktable. "Muchas gracias for the excelente advice," he joked.

Rob rolled his eyes. He then peered down at the floor where he was vacuuming. It was _still _dirty.

"Huh? What's going on?" Rob tried giving Kirby a few harder sweeps. The bits of trash and foodstuff had not disappeared.

"Something wrong?" asked Jay.

Rob stopped for a moment. "Agh... the vacuum won't work."

Jay lowered his eyebrows. "It _is_ gettin' kinda old ya know."

"YES," Rob answered, "I know."

"So... how 'bout getting a _new _one huh?"

Rob laughed in annoyance. "Boy, you sound just like Chris."

Jay made an exaggerated shrug. "Then I guess we're _both_ being sensible!"

Rob sighed. "Just give me some time; I'll fix it."

He finally unplugged Kirby and went over to the sink to wash his hands.

Jay interrupted his hand-washing with a request. "Uh, hey, I've been meaning to ask you, I need to borrow twenty bucks to pay this guy off..."

Rob instantly whipped around. "WHAT?!"

And off the two young men argued once more. Lampy decided to take advantage of this and hastily hopped over to Kirby.

"What's the matter Kirby?" he whispered. "This has gotta be the third or fourth time you haven't worked!"

"Let's just drop it for now, okay?" Kirby whispered back.

"But, you're dysfunctional, and the Master's not gonna – "

"I said drop it!"

That's when Blanky caught on to the conversation and looked over the bedside. "The Master will repair you, won't he?"

"Ah... I dunno." Kirby could only look down to the question.

Something hit Lampy like a brick wall. "OH, that's right! Then you'll finally get to suck up the old Halloween candy under the bed!" he shouted.

To that Kirby grumbled. Lampy then flipped back to him. "_Shhh_. Quiet!" the lamp whispered, voice cracking. Kirby gave him a bewildered look.

* * *

><p>A little while later, Rob had placed Kirby onto his worktable and was now trying to fix him. He took a pair of pliers and tinkered away in his chair as Jay lay down on the bed. It was some mighty hard work. But soon enough, he had to stop, set the pliers down, and wipe his forehead. He wasn't making any progress.<p>

Then he pounded the table with a fist. "Agh, I-I don't know what the deal is! The air pump seems perfectly fine; nothing's chafed, nothing's scratched..."

Reflexively Jay sat up from the bed. "So, you're meaning to tell me that you can't fix it? _You _of all people?"

"I'm not some 'appliance wizard' you know," Rob said to that comment. "Maybe... maybe it just isn't responding to current anymore."

Rob stared down. Jay frowned.

But then Rob raised his head with an idea. "But maybe, if I tried a _repair shop_..."

The mechanic swung his chair around to a nearby bookshelf and started searching for a phonebook.

"A repair shop?" Jay put on a face of confusion. "YOU, go to a repair shop?"

At the same time, Toaster slightly opened his eyes and took a peek from the kitchen counter.

Rob groaned. "Enough with that already. I can't fix _everything_."

Jay merely sighed and rested his chin on his hand. "Modesty will get you nowhere."

Rob briefly stopped searching, his own hands in suspension. "...Well shoot, Chris is working today isn't she? I can't be asking for her car!" He eventually swung back, closed Kirby up, and arose from the chair.

"Ahem. Also, we have to help serve at potluck today, remember?" Jay pointed out while Rob made his way past him.

"Oh, of course... how could I forget?" Rob put his tools away in a box. He set Kirby down on the floor as Jay hopped up from the bed. "I guess we should get a move-on then."

Rob headed right for the door and opened it, with Jay immediately following.

"Yep, _NOW_ you're talking sense!" finished Jay, slamming the door behind them both. The slam shook a picture of Rob's old summer cottage on the wall.


	2. Cottage Fire

**Cottage Fire**

* * *

><p>The painting of the cottage soon dissolved to the real cottage, where the sun was beginning to set for the evening. The "For Sale" sign, which had once been set up in the front, could no longer be seen.<p>

Inside, potatoes were sizzling in a frying pan. From the living room a football game was heard playing on television. In the kitchen, a husband and wife were busy setting the table, laying out all the silverware, bread, and napkins. An electric cuckoo clock that had been ticking nearby promptly struck at six o' clock and sounded off.

"CUC-KOO! CUC-KOO!"

"Hey kids, come down! It's time for dinner!" the mother called.

Out in the living room, two boys appeared at the top of stairs and started stomping down. The oldest son went first and slid on the railing. At the bottom he taunted his younger brother who had actually taken the stairs.

"_Yeah!_ Beat you!" He giggled and pushed the smaller boy.

"Agh!"

"You'd better hurry up! The food'll get cold!" teased their mother from afar.

"Okay!" the big brother called back. His little brother gave him a harder push and the two began tumbling around on the floor laughing.

Their father entered the room and turned off the TV with the remote. "Whoa-ho-ho!" he exclaimed, watching his two sons roughhouse. "Easy guys! We can't afford _too_ many broken bones!"

The boys stopped for a moment and glanced up.

"Are you serious?"

"We can't afford it?"

The dad laughed. "Nah... now don't be worrying about money. Come on in while the pork chop's still warm and toasty."

The big brother elbowed the little brother and snickered. "Think you can handle it? Or is it gonna be too hot and burn your tongue like last time?"

The little brother pouted at that challenge.

* * *

><p>While everyone was bringing his plate of food to the kitchen table, the little brother took his own plate and decided to sneak out of the kitchen. He saw the air conditioner blowing right up there on the windowsill and raised the plate up to it to cool his meal off.<p>

"_Eric!_ Quit fooling around and scoot back here!" his mother shouted.

Eric looked over his shoulder but stayed where he was. Then his big brother suddenly stepped in and pulled him back to the kitchen.

"Aah!" Eric yelped.

With that the family finally settled down at the table and started chatting away.

A lamp that was standing upright on top of the television set sprang to life. She peered over at the air conditioner.

"Psst! A/C. You hear all that?"

Air Conditioner yawned and reluctantly opened his left eye. "Pretty much everything," he drawled.

The lamp laughed a little. "Yeah, that kid's doing all he can to prove himself a trooper." She proceeded to stand up straight and tall like a soldier, with a serious face to boot.

Air Conditioner decided to play along. "Heh, unfortunately he can't do so much yet as reach the cookie jar on the counter. That'll take some 'finesse.'"

"Mmm, _or _one big growth spurt." The lamp hadn't gotten Air Conditioner's joke. "But, he might never be able to reach Cuckoo Clock, he's so 'high' and 'mighty.'"

Air Conditioner raised an eyebrow. "_THAT _guy? Ahh Sier, don't be going off again..."

Sier nevertheless continued. "He talks to himself! Telling himself he's the epitome of time-bearing... or something. Long story short, he's _crazy_."

"Which automatically makes you perfectly sound, huh?" The window unit couldn't help poking fun at his friend.

"WHA? ...Oh-ho, I'd consider myself 'realistic' at least. ...Do, _you _think my cord's frayed?"

"Why on earth would I think that?" Air Conditioner smirked ever so slightly.

Sier snapped her plug. "Come now, be honest! Honest!"

"You won't wanna hear honesty blowin' from my mouth..."

To that Sier gasped. "Are you kidding? Tell me you're kidding, 'cause I have NO idea when you're kidding and when you're not."

Air Conditioner chuckled. "Cool it; it's not a big deal."

"It is to _ME!_" Sier retaliated. "I wanna be in top shape, and if I get any more panicky and loopy I just might break down and be thrown out. _For good!_"

Air Conditioner stopped smiling. "_That _sure is lookin' on the bright side of things."

Sier responded by staring down and drooping her head.

"Polish your shade, shine your bulb; it's all easy stuff."

"I guess so," Sier sighed. "But I'm not standing still if some fancy stained glass lamp comes and waltzes on in here." She glanced around the room neurotically, then back at Air Conditioner. "That's for certain."

* * *

><p>Eventually night came about and it was time for bed. The cottage had become dark and quiet, and the only noise downstairs was the constant ticking of Cuckoo Clock. Meanwhile upstairs, the two young boys were slipping into bed in what used to be the Master's room. Their mother stood at the doorway, ready to turn the lights out.<p>

"Goodnight boys! Don't start punching each other once I leave!"

"All right," said Eric.

"Got it," said Eric's older brother.

The mother smiled and flipped off the light switch.

In the other bedroom, the father was pacing around anxiously and lighting one of his cigars. He tried to smoke it when he heard his wife's voice coming from the hallway.

"Steve? Is that smoke?"

"N-no honey!" the husband replied as he patted the cigar out on the side of his pants and tossed it into a nearby closet. "Not anymore."

"Well make sure the kids aren't breathing in smog when we're out."

"Of course."

Inside the closet, the cigar was still glowing red.

* * *

><p>Later on in the night, the cottage stayed silent. Sier and Air Conditioner were inanimate and fast asleep. Cuckoo Clock kept on ticking.<p>

There was a faint burning sound coming from upstairs. All of a sudden, the stomping of feet could be heard frantically rushing down the steps to the front door.

"Let's go! Move-move-_MOVE!_" whispered the father harshly.

The door slammed shut. Air Conditioner woke up. Sier soon awakened as well, and then turned her light on to look in the direction of the door.

Bright flames slowly appeared at the top of the stairs and started to creep down. After a moment's notice, a couple of fiery planks fell onto the living room floor. Sier glanced around in a panic. The kitchen gradually lit up with fire. The fire managed to reach Cuckoo Clock, who popped out as a bird and cuckooed down at the flames multiple times. Sier leaped off the television set, and Air Conditioner watched as she made a run for the door. Unluckily, the fire blocked her path completely. She swiveled her head in many different directions, only to realize she was trapped by firewalls. And then, the burning ceiling up above began to give way. It crashed down without warning and buried her.

The fire engulfed the rubble and now started creeping in Air Conditioner's direction. Air Conditioner looked left, right, and then broke out into a cold sweat. He could see heat waves forming in the air and distorting a red background. In vain, he attempted to blow the fire away, but it would not stop coming. Air Conditioner then realized that the window frame above him was beginning to burn and creak. The air conditioning unit had no options left. Using all of his strength, he pulled once, then twice, and then instantly broke himself free from his power cord in the wall. He fell outside as the window collapsed. More rubble dropped to the living room floor.

Out the other window, the west wall of the cottage was burning. Smoke rose into the night sky.


	3. Reparation

**"Reparation"**

* * *

><p>The very next morning the sun was shining in the washed blue sky, where birds could be heard chirping. Down below in the parking lot, Rob was setting Kirby in the trunk of a red car while his girlfriend Chris was busy putting on her lipstick.<p>

"Whew, thanks for helping Chris," Rob said as he finished his task.

Chris remained fixed on her hand-mirror. "No problem. But uh, you _really _should think about buying your own car sometime."

Rob laughed sheepishly. "Yeah, I'll make sure to do that."

"...What's Jay been getting caught up in?"

"Oh, pfft, the usual..."

Meanwhile up in the nearby dorm, Lampy was sticking his head out the three-story window, watching everything get set into motion. "Looks like he's about to leave!" he informed the rest of the gang as they waited atop the kitchen counter.

"Now's our chance!" announced Toaster. "Blanky, are you ready?" He saw the blanket step up.

"Yeah. This is for Kirby," Blanky replied.

"Great!" Toaster proceeded to tie his cord onto the kitchen sink's faucet and Radio's cord onto his lever. Lampy, who already had a knotted grip on Radio's antenna, was first to make a descent out of the open window.

"All right, we wanna rappel down nice and easy," Radio began, standing at the edge of the windowsill. "Not too weighty on the rope, feet straight, chins forward, _vigilant_! Always vigilant of what might be comin' from behind – a bird... or a rock. We don't wanna be unprepared when we take on El Capitan at The Nose."

Lampy was dangling from far below now, listening to this jabber. "I _THINK _we have it covered exponentially!" he yelled.

Radio peered all the way down. "That's fine. Just makin' sure your sixty-watt stays all in one piece, like it needs to. Right then. Alee-_oop_!"

He made a sudden jump out the window, causing Lampy to plummet by an entire cord length. "AAH!" The cords twanged in place. As Toaster watched this, he noticed that Blanky had covered his mouth in fright. But then he offered the blanket a lever, to which the blanket took with a smile.

* * *

><p>Rob was just then getting into the car and buckling his seatbelt. He looked over to face the car's true owner.<p>

"All right Chris, I'm not sure how long it's gonna take to fix that vacuum, but I'll get back here as soon as possible. Sound good?"

"Yeah okay." Chris was in the middle of cramming all her cosmetics into her purse. "Ah, gee whiz I've got more junk than I know what to do with."

Rob raised a finger in the air. "One question: is makeup _always _such a necessity for girls?"

"YOU GOT IT!" Chris answered all-too-enthusiastically, pulling the purse strap over her shoulder. Rob started up the car's engine while she happily strolled on over to her classes.

Soon enough, there was a distant yell that got louder and louder, until Lampy finally smashed onto the sidewalk – upright, but in a daze. Radio on the other hand hopped on down without any problems. Then came Toaster, who had Blanky wrapped under his lever. All the appliances looked in the direction of the car that was sitting out in the empty parking lot. It was revving up to leave.

"Are we too late?" questioned the blanket.

"I think we might be," was all Radio could say.

But Toaster wasn't ready to give up, even though he was breathing hard. "...No, we can still make it! Come on!"

He started to dash off toward the car, forcing Radio and Lampy to dash off too. "WHOA, the cord!" Lampy shouted.

Toaster aimed for the open trunk of the car where Kirby was standing. The car's exhaust pipe sputtered, and it seemed that everyone was, in fact, too late. But the determined toaster made a quick leap and grabbed onto the bumper of the car. With Blanky still in hold, he climbed into the trunk and then pulled up the rest of the group by their cords. As the whole car sprang forward, Lampy's head jerked backward before following with the rest of him.

* * *

><p>Now zooming down the road, nestled safely in the trunk, Kirby opened his eyes and noticed immediately that the other appliances were sitting right there. Needless to say, he was flabbergasted.<p>

"What in the world are you all doing?!"

Lampy promptly answered to that. "Comin' along with you!"

"Yeah, we gave it a little thought and figured you could use some reassurance going to this uh... repair shop!" Toaster clarified.

"_And_," added Radio, "we could see if that shop had any room for some value-added maintenance!"

"You know, just in case we wind up in your perspective someday," Lampy finished.

"Uh... that's fine I suppose." Kirby turned his eyes away and looked onward into space. But that's when Blanky crawled up to him and gave him a small hug.

"Don't worry; you'll be okay!"

"...As okay as I ever was havin' to deal with _you_ guys."

Lampy started to laugh. "Oh-ho-ho, that's a good one!" Kirby glared at the lamp, and Toaster couldn't help giggling to himself.

"Our ol' broken record!" exclaimed the radio.

But Blanky was looking around in confusion. He didn't really see why, at this point, it was so funny.

* * *

><p><em>Further down the busy city road, Rob turned on the car's radio and played a song, while Toaster, Lampy, and Radio began to sing to one of Radio's own tunes. They passed by stores, restaurants, and tall office buildings. Once the appliances had to break and inanimate themselves as pedestrians crossed by. Stoplights were working hard to keep the traffic flowing efficiently, and at one point Rob stopped at a red light before turning a corner where people were reading newspapers and carrying briefcases to work. The appliances then saw they were passing by an auto repair shop, where a mechanic was working on a propped-up car. Rob then drove up a tall steep hill, and once he got to the top, he rushed downhill and swept some papers into the air.<em>

The song suddenly broke for a moment as Rob's own song ended.

"And that was one of your favorite upbeat tunes to help give you a jump-start, coming to you from 92.1 FM, those Golden Oldies. ...In more local news, the fire department is still working on dousing the last of a wildfire breakout."

Rob huffed and started drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

"The fire was located six miles north of Wayside Wood shifting to the east between the hours of one and five a.m., approximate time..."

This was enough information for Rob. He widened his eyes and glanced at the car radio.

"That's where the cottage is!" he gasped. As soon as he could Rob pulled the wheel over left and rushed out to a suburban area.

_Meanwhile, Toaster, Lampy, and Radio kept singing, this time in minor key. Toaster noticed all the houses and how they were all built with great sturdiness and durability so they could last. Eventually houses stopped passing by, and the appliances stopped singing as they watched the remainder of the city disappear into the horizon. They were now in familiar territory. Familiar, _green_ territory._

Toaster, Lampy, Radio, and Blanky peered out of the trunk only to watch as colorful, lively trees slowly faded to black, dead trees.

Lampy made a keen observation. "...We're not in the city right now."

Toaster looked at Lampy and then turned back to the scenery. "Everything looks all... _burnt_."

"You could probably tell from experience Slots," remarked Radio, joining in. "Anyway, the weather guy said something about rain last night, so _I'd_ say some kinda lightning storm must've done the deed."

"Whoa..." Blanky had yet to take all of this in.

"Wow." Lampy winced a little in the eye.

* * *

><p>After a long while, the car reached one last hill and then drove on up. Rob was more focused than he'd ever been. "Please be okay. Please-please-<em>PLEASE <em>be okay."

But the sight of a destroyed cottage in the distance gradually came into view.

"Oh no."


	4. Memories of the Past

**Memories of the Past**

* * *

><p>Eventually Rob pulled the car up to what remained of the old structure and parked next to it. Only the cottage walls were left standing, and even they had been smothered with a black coat of burnt wood. After fathoming all of this, the bespectacled redhead got out of the car. He saw a few firemen who were still surveying the area and immediately went over to speak with one of them.<p>

"Excuse me, sir? Sir! Over here!"

In the trunk of the car, the five appliances awakened once more and looked over to see if the coast was clear. Toaster then decided to creep out of the trunk, and naturally, Lampy, Radio, and Blanky followed suit. Kirby, however, was last to get out.

Toaster gasped softly as he and the rest of the gang came up close to view the dark cottage ruins. Every one of them stared at the roofless walls above and slowly began getting lost in their thoughts. Everyone except Kirby, that is. The old vacuum stood at a distance until he heard a coughing sound coming from behind the ruins. He chose to drive over there and see what was making all the ruckus.

* * *

><p>In the meantime, Toaster, Blanky, Lampy, and Radio looked on through one of the front windows that had been left broken. On the inside, however, the cottage ruins suddenly flashed back to the days of old with the sweep of a yellow blanket. The young Master was twirling Blanky all about the living room while listening to Radio play his jazzy music on the sofa. The boy danced circles around a black-and-white television before passing Air Conditioner by and poking behind the corner of the kitchen.<p>

While in the kitchen, the Master watched his dad leave his tools on the counter and made a reach for one of the screwdrivers lying near the edge. After some struggle he finally took it in his hand and raised it up high so that its reflection showed in Toaster's chrome.

With the tool in his grasp, the Master attempted to "fix" Lampy on the kitchen floor by sticking a few screws into his lampshade, even though the bulb was already in place.

Afterward he ran out to his mother, who was busy vacuuming the living room carpet, and tugged on her shirt to show her his work. Instead his mom decided to stand aside and let him take the vacuum cleaner for a ride, which the Master happily accepted.

Having set Toaster, Blanky, and Radio all together in the middle of the upstairs hallway, the Master took Lampy under his arm, hopped onto Kirby, and started making Kirby charge toward the other three appliances. He went faster and faster, making the vacuum _VROOM_ louder, until at the last second he made a big jump right over the would-be victims of a head-on collision. Kirby soared in the air and came bouncing down on the floor, his cord whipping by with vigor.

* * *

><p>The cord whipped back to present-day Kirby, who was still rolling along to the other side of the ruined cottage. But, without his suction ability, he found he was choking on the long green grass. Even so, he hacked out some of the stuff and pushed onward around the corner.<p>

But _then_, right after doing that, Kirby found himself halting abruptly. He stared out in front of him and saw... that blasted Air Conditioner, caught underneath some pitch-black planks. What a nice surprise.

Kirby could do nothing but stare. "..._YOU?!_"

A little shaken, Air Conditioner recognized that irritatingly low voice and coughed. "Generous with the names, aren't we Kirby."

"Hrmph," Kirby remarked, snapping out of the stare. "Can't believe I'm talkin' to ya; last I saw you were hangin' around _dead_."

"When you're done reminiscing about nothing, wouldja mind gettin' me out of this trash heap? The air's all full of reeked-up gunk." His voice almost gone, Air Conditioner coughed again.

"Dunno, why would I be wasting my time?" replied the vacuum cleaner. "I'm GETTIN' out of here."

Kirby turned straight around and was about to leave when the window unit stopped him with another question.

"Whoa-whoa, HEY, where _WERE _all you guys? You try throwin' yourselves into a garbage can someplace?"

Suddenly Kirby got defensive and turned back. "_No_, we went on out looking for the Master!"

"...What're you talking about."

"Uh-huh," Kirby confirmed, "and guess what? We found him! And he's right here, checking on the cottage! ...Er uh, that is what's left of it." He took a brief and unsettling glance at the ruins.

"Quit pulling cords; he's long gone."

"Want proof? Why dontcha look around the corner?!"

Air Conditioner gazed down at the ground for a moment. "...Oh yeah, that's _real _funny Kirby. I'll just get on up and sprout a pair o' wheels, no problem!"

The vacuum raised an eyebrow at the window unit, and then gradually shifted his view to a small children's playground that had been charred by the fire. There was a slightly burnt-up red wagon sitting there. Kirby looked back at Air Conditioner.

* * *

><p>At the same time, Rob was having things explained to him by one of the younger firemen, who kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other.<p>

"We're really, _really _sorry about this; I know the old place meant a lot to you and we... we just couldn't make it in time before it started spreading out to the lawn and – "

"AH, it's fine," Rob cut in. "I mean, no injuries! That's the good news."

"Yeah, but I have to say it was still pretty bad..."

Toaster and the other three appliances came back down to earth once they heard this. They all looked in the direction of their Master.

"Seems their 'verbal exchanges' are beginning to close out," Radio observed.

Lampy turned to Toaster. "So that's our cue right?"

"Yeah," Toaster replied.

He and the rest were starting to head off back to the car when the toaster suddenly stopped and shot glances around.

"_W-wait!_ Hey!" he interjected. "Where's Kirby?!"

Everybody else stopped too.

"I don't know!" Lampy exclaimed to explain. "But he oughta be showing up soon!"

"He couldn't have gone far!" Radio continued for him.

They could hear the Master's voice drawing nearer.

"No-no-no, it's really okay! Okay? Okay. Thanks!"

Blanky peeped up at the sound. "The Master?"

Toaster thought hard and fast. "...We gotta go!"

With that said the appliances had no choice but to hurriedly hop back to the trunk of the car.

* * *

><p>And while all this was taking place, Kirby had been right in the middle of hoisting Air Conditioner up onto the red wagon, keeping the big heavy cube balanced on his back. With some more effort Air Conditioner was set snugly into his transportation vehicle, and Kirby tied his cord on the handle and began to slowly pull everything forward.<p>

Rob stroked through his hair as he walked on to the car. "How could this've happened?" he sighed.

Stepping backward toward the car's side, Rob gazed at the cottage for the very last time. Then he took the door of the open trunk where his appliances were and gave it a forceful _SLAM_.

"Unbelievable." He stalked to the car's front and got in, then started up the engine.

Kirby was just now coming around the corner to reveal to Air Conditioner exactly where the Master had parked. However, alternatively, he noticed the parking area was empty; and as he gazed ahead, he caught eye of the actual vehicle disappearing down a hill.

"No-no, hold up, NO!" he hollered, pulling forth a ways.

Kirby helplessly watched the car as it headed on off into the distance. So much for that endeavor.

A smart-alecky voice rang from behind him. "What'd I tell ya. No sign of that kid anywhere."

Kirby got mad again and whipped around. "Will you knock it off?! You KNOW you just saw that car!"

"Yeah that could be anyone's car. They've been passing by every ding-dong day!"

Kirby was about to answer to that when instead he stuttered. Then he stared off into the horizon.

"...All I know is I gotta follow this road and get back home."

"Here we go again."

"If you say something about me being low on watts, I'm goin' on without ya! Maybe even tip you over while I'm at it!"

Air Conditioner was somehow off-put by that retaliation. "Wait a minute. So you're _actually _thinking about takin' me out to nowhere-land."

Kirby instantly recalled what he just said. "...I'm havin' trouble thinking about it NOW."

But that's when the vacuum heard distant voices coming from the left side. It was two other firemen, and they were walking their way up the hill, getting closer and closer. Kirby widened his eyes all of a sudden.

"Uh-oh."

Air Conditioner raised a brow at him. "What's 'uh-oh.'"

"They're gonna find us!"

Kirby panicked on which way he should go next. Eventually he turned sharply and rolled himself and Air Conditioner back behind the structure.

The firemen were just then appearing at the hilltop, chatting nonchalantly. So the vacuum made his roundabout to the ruin's backside, which was facing a still-green wooded site. He started driving down that side of the hill.

But he was picking up too much speed on his path, going... going... gone. The vacuum rapidly lost control of all six rolling wheels, and then Air Conditioner found himself catching up to Kirby and ramming him from behind. The two appliances went flying into some nearby bushes. Soon after, the angry chattering of a raccoon could be heard.


	5. We've Got to Go Back!

**We've Got to Go Back!**

* * *

><p>The red car was speeding along the road, past tall coniferous trees both green and black. Inside its closed trunk, Toaster was busy trying to push it open again – but so far wasn't having any such luck.<p>

"There's _gotta_ be a way out of here!" he exclaimed in ever-growing frustration.

"I don't know if there is!" Lampy conceded, who had his light shining in the darkness. "The trunk's probably locked down tight."

Toaster pushed the side of the door to no avail. "Well we're not gonna just leave him back there! Kirby can't make it on his own!"

"But he IS Kirby after all," said Lampy rolling his eyes.

"Yeah," agreed Radio, "you know when the going gets tough he always gets tougher. And a bit more obstinate too – that's what I say."

Toaster stopped what he was doing and glanced over. "...Are you guys for real on this? Think about it!"

To that Radio began his proposal. "I think, leaving the _Master _would mean digging our own graves, complete with little twelve-by-nine inch coffins with diamond-tuck interiors."

"NO it wouldn't mean that!" came Toaster's answer.

Then Blanky crawled into the light and sat at Toaster's side. "We _have _to go back! Kirby's sick; he needs us with him or he'll NEVER get home!"

There was a pause for thought. Toaster gave Lampy and Radio a glaring look. Finally, Lampy bowed his head and sighed.

"...Okay. In that case, you can count me in."

Lampy began hopping forward before halting and turning to Radio. "What about _you_?"

Radio just stood there. "Well I uh... I don't really see why we should, I mean – "

Toaster was appalled by this. "_RADIO!_"

Radio stood up straight in realization. "Oh-oh, YES." He started fishing around on the floor for something. "Nothing to fret about." He took a small paper clip in his antenna. "I'll crack this devil like a hen house egg, that's what I'll do."

Toaster, Blanky, and Lampy made way for the clock radio and his trusty tool as he approached the front of the trunk. Lampy shined his light on him to help.

"Now gimme some room here." He opened the clip and bent it in just the right way, then dug into a small opening with it. On the outside of the trunk, the hooked clip twiddled about and then inserted itself into the lock. After much twisting and toggling, Radio heard the lock click.

"Success!" he announced.

The trunk door slowly opened in front of the appliances, and the outdoor light grew stronger. When the door finished its ascent, everyone peered out at the road that was rushing beneath them and zooming onward, with trees whizzing by on both sides. No one was all that eager to make a jump.

Toaster turned his eyes left and right at his friends to assure them. "...Ready?"

He took Blanky and Lampy each by the lever. Radio promptly took Lampy by the cord.

"One... two... three... _GO!_" With the toaster in the lead all four of them leaped out of the car. Upon landing on the road, they tumbled along for a while before coming to a stop so they could take a good look at their surroundings. But their surroundings were only made up of dark, shadowy forest, with woodland creatures hooting and hollering to further set the mood.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, in the same stretch of forest, there was a whirring sound going about and some thick brush shifting around – plant by plant, and bush by bush. Eventually Kirby emerged from the greenery hacking up leaves and desperately trying to breathe in some air. Then came Air Conditioner, who along with the red wagon was soon seen emerging from behind.<p>

"You should've tried the path over there," Air Conditioner stated. "Or at _least _kept going straight. See? Now we're lost."

Kirby was panting like a hound. "I can't navigate through all these weeds and junk when you keep complaining!"

The window unit stared up into the trees. "Well I'm just tryin' to give some much-needed advice." A tree branch suddenly flew back and hit him square in the eye. "So far you haven't been listening, and so far there's no road." He then hopped up on the wagon's rim as it stopped. "Whaddyou make o' that huh?!"

"Zip," answered Kirby. Air Conditioner sat back down. "You haven't got ANY idea how to find your way around here. So let me concentrate for once and we'll get where we need to."

The vacuum resumed his trucking. As he pushed more leaves and branches aside, he gradually began to see a bright, glorious clearing ahead of him. This gave him enough relief to make him push harder.

"_Finally!_" he breathed.

Quickly pulling everything up to the light, Kirby broke free from the forest and came to a tall cliff. But looking over the cliff, the vacuum could not see a road anywhere for miles. Unfortunately, there were only more trees.

Kirby gathered his steam and then let it all out in one go. "Aaagh... _DAGNABBIT!_"

His voice echoed out three times over the forest and off the huge mountains in the distance.

"I kept tellin' ya, the _opposite_ way!" exclaimed Air Conditioner. (He really shouldn't have said that.)

Kirby remained fixed on the view ahead of him. Air Conditioner tried to lean over and see what was up. "...Hey, you hearin' this? _BACK UP_, and go the other way around."

"Oh I'm hearin' ya."

Air Conditioner raised an eyebrow curiously.

Kirby turned slightly to the right without making eye contact. "But I've just about had it."

Air Conditioner had had enough of this himself. "Now don't be gettin' all dramatic; ya know I'm only tryin' to help turn your sorry bag in the right direction!"

With that Kirby whipped back, passing the window unit by. "I don't _NEED _your HELP!"

He placed the unit between himself and the cliff's edge. "...In fact, I might as well dump you off this cliff right now!"

In response to this, Air Conditioner went on laughing. "Oh come _on _Kirby!" he jeered. "Those threats of yours are idle; you know that."

Kirby then raised his right eyebrow. "...Oh really? Wanna bet?!" He pushed the wagon close to the edge with his cord.

Air Conditioner automatically switched his tactics and attempted to look behind himself. "Whoa, cut the act. It's not gonna get us anywhere."

"Hmph, yeah? And somethin's tellin' me you're a little _afraid_." Kirby nudged the wagon further to the edge, which caused chunks of dirt to fall down into a dark abyss.

Next, Air Conditioner merely sighed. "How many times. Look, you're not gonna go through with it! So just turn back so we have some chance of finding the road before it gets dark!"

"I WOULD if things got quiet around here!" Kirby shot. "Know where I'm goin'?!"

The vacuum cleaner lifted his cord and narrowed his eyes, ready to push the wagon all the way. Seeing this, Air Conditioner gave the bottom of the cliff one last glance. He then immediately twisted the wagon around with his weight. The cord that was tied onto the wagon's handle jerked off to the side, taking Kirby by surprise. As he was yanked to the cliff's very edge, Kirby tried to keep his balance as best he could, but he slowly tipped over and began to plunge backward, along with Air Conditioner and the wagon. He only caught a slight glimpse of the cliff's bottom before everything blacked out. Then there came the awful sound of a hard THUD.


	6. Playful Beasts

**Playful Beasts**

* * *

><p>A bright light suddenly flashed through the darkness. Lampy was hopping over the terrain and checking out every spot of the now night-fallen forest, with Toaster and Radio moving out ahead of him.<p>

That's when Lampy spoke up. "Which way're we supposed to be going? Wasn't this the shortcut?"

Toaster squinted his eyes but couldn't make out every single detail of his surroundings. "Ahh, it's getting too hard to see."

"The forest for the trees?" Radio horned in as he was swaggering along. A booing audience sounded through his speaker. "Ooo, sorry about that one folks."

The forest was too tall and large to fathom, especially at night. "Guess we'd better stop somewhere..." Toaster finally concluded, "and set up camp 'til morning."

"Somewhere safe and less rugged," said Lampy, mispronouncing "rugged." He hopped down a rocky, mossy dip. "Hurry up Blanky!" he shouted behind him.

Posthaste, Blanky could be seen slinking over and down the rocks. "I'm coming!" he peeped.

Once he joined Lampy, he heard him make another one of his insightful remarks. "This wouldn't be _nearly_ as exacting if Kirby were here."

After catching wind of this tidbit Radio turned his "face" back to the lamp. "Yeah that's why we're lookin' for him Sir Aristotle."

"Oh right!" replied the dimwit. "Heh, how funny."

Lampy looked at Blanky. Blanky looked at Lampy. Then the two appliances heard a strange howling noise sounding through the woods, and had to take time to look around.

"Shh. What was that?" Toaster whispered.

Radio creaked his antenna a tad. "Sounded like a bellowing yeti to me."

"A YETI?" piped the worried blanket.

As the weird howling and yipping sounds continued, Lampy began to glance around frantically, his light flashing on every bush, crevice, and tree root he could find.

"It sounds like it's getting closer," speculated the wary toaster.

Lampy kept up his frantic antics. "Is it?"

At those words, everything went dead silent.

Radio turned slightly. "...It stopped." Lampy's light then blared upon him, making him jump and reactively cover himself with his antenna. "Whoa, don't keep swinging that blinder around! For the love of Ray Charles!" He rubbed his dial-slash-eye.

But Lampy just couldn't stop glancing about. "_Sorry!_ I can't help it!" claimed he.

"You can't help filling your chrome with hot air either."

"WHAT'D YOU JUST SAY?!"

"SHHH!" Toaster cut.

The lamp put his argument with the radio on standstill, innocently in fact. "Wasn't MY fault!"

"Stay quiet!" whispered Toaster as he ever-cautiously backed up a ways. When Blanky watched him do so, he noticed in the flip side of the toaster's chrome that there was something moving – there was a scary prowling animal coming from behind. He gasped, and before he knew it a small coyote pup pounced on him and rolled with him along the ground.

"Aah!"

The pup rolled off of Blanky, then stopped, looked, and jumped on him again.

After having swiveled around to witness this unexpected assault, Toaster shouted "No! Get off of him!" and came up to try and shoo the troublemaking beast away. However, two _other _coyote pups soon appeared and tackled him, rendering him useless.

"Ahh! Hang on Blanky!"

"I-I can't!" cried the appliance; the first pup got onto his soft yellow wool and licked his face, which made him turn away in plain disgust.

Seeing this from a few yards, Lampy hopped up one single step. "C'mon Radio, we need to give 'em a plug!"

"Right!" said the appliance at his side. He promptly moved forward, but he halted and turned back to Lampy, noticing that he himself had failed to move from his spot.

"Are you coming?"

Lampy's eyes flipped to and fro. "..._Well _I uh..."

The duo was then startled by a shadow looming above, giving them both a bad feeling. They peered up only to behold a full-grown coyote standing above and panting down with a smile on its face. It howled at the white moon in the sky and leaped over the frightened appliances, its dark shadow washing them by. As it landed in front of Blanky, the rambunctious coyote child obediently hopped aside so that its parent could snatch up the soft blanket in its mouth. Right after doing so it pranced off into the deeper neck of the woods.

"Help!" Blanky's voice was distancing.

With this desperate plead for assistance Toaster grunted and pushed the other two pups away from him. "COME BACK!" he called, immediately chasing after the blanket bandit.

Lampy gasped at the sight. "Toaster, wait! I'm following you!"

Radio watched as his lamp pal left him for a rocky hill. But that's also when he saw another adult coyote glaring at him from the port bow, too close for comfort, even.

"Oh, hi, didn't see ya there... heh," he uttered whilst backing off; and the canine drew nearer.

"...That's it, I'm spent!_ Excelsior!_" He dashed off like lightning in the direction of his friends before the "enemy" got a chance to paw at him.

Ahead, meanwhile, the other coyote parent was running through the woods with the yellow blanket still in its mouth. It scrambled up a small grassy cliff, and the pursuing Toaster did the exact same thing... only with a little less prowess and a little more difficulty. He panted upon making it to the top, only to see the animal bending over in a playful stance and cocking its brow at him. So then he fell for its tease and charged forward; instead of catching hold of Blanky though, he was sidestepped by the coyote, who at that point decided to just jump around in circles. Toaster had no way of keeping up, particularly when he found himself having trouble re-balancing after sharp angle turns; he wasn't built for this running business.

Blanky, though shaken, managed to say something. "I'm sorry Toaster!"

"You don't have to... apologize!" Toaster panted.

Instantaneously the lamp who had been lagging behind could be seen popping up his shade from the edge of the hill. "D-did you get Blanky yet?" he inquired.

Toaster was having a staring contest with the canine as Lampy found his footing on the grass next to him. "It's not letting him go!"

"Well why not?" Curiously, meaning no harm at all, Lampy flipped on his light right into the coyote's eyeballs. The coyote's pupils became tiny as specks and it yelped in pain, dropping Blanky in the process.

"Whoa!" uttered the blanket as he found himself on the ground once again. Toaster took this window of opportunity and ran over to snatch him up on his lever.

"Let's bail!" he ordered; then he bolted for lower ground. Lampy watched him go, but also watched the coyote ardently rubbing its poor eyes. The fact was he still had time to escape, so without any more thought he did just that.

Meanwhile, the other coyote was on its backside cackling, busy being tickled to death by that tiny antenna of Radio's. "O ferocious Garm," Radio began to speak, "how ironic is it your own blood is now being fatefully spilled out of you! So say in the name of Tyr, and all his warring aptitude – "

Toaster, Blanky, and Lampy appeared as blurs as they rushed past. "Come on Radio!" came Toaster's alerting shout of accomplishment.

"O-oh, are we leaving now?" Radio ceased with his dastardly tickling and looked the other way, which allowed his enemy to recover and then growl at him. Its coyote children came by and joined in.

The clueless radio took notice of the furry predators eyeing their prey. "Back for more?" he taunted unto them, backing away slowly. Then he went running again.

Taking sharp turns around logs and hindering vegetation, the red machine leaped down an uneven plateau before looking around and viewing another opening of the wood, where a tall cliff was standing. He could see his friends trying to scale it to the top and get to safety.

"Up here!" called Toaster, who by now appeared very small. Seeing this, Radio hightailed it over a fallen tree trunk leaning against the side of the cliff. He caught up to Lampy, who was lagging as usual, and passed him by in haste. As Lampy was last to hop off the trunk and get to the rocks, he panted and made his leap over the roots that were sticking up in his way. He was about to make it when his cord slipped between two narrowly spaced roots, and his plug got caught in them. He lurched in midair and came down hard on the rock beneath, now flat and mangled, with the cord trailing down to his level.

Two paws appeared and clutched onto the trunk's edge, and the head of a coyote pup popped up. It smiled down at Lampy with a dribbling tongue.

The lamp took a look, widened his eyes, and began scrambling up a rocky wall to escape. But the pup leaped right at him and grabbed his cord by its mouth.

"AH!" Lampy shrieked, and the beast pulled him from his ascent.

Toaster and Radio had just reached the very top of the cliff, and while Radio was occupied with running away, Toaster noticed someone missing and stared back down the wall.

"...Lampy!" He could see his friend struggling below. "I'm on my way!" He began carefully descending back.

But Lampy managed to bring his head up to a stone that was sticking out and bite onto it like a grapple. The pup refused to let go, so he had to sway his cord around in a last-ditch effort to shake it off. Eventually the coyote released itself from the cord, went flying, and tumbled down the big tree trunk, back to its brothers and sisters who were watching.

The lamp was then able to continue his ascension, and as he neared the top, the ever-selfless Toaster helped him along by pulling up his worn cord.

"You all right?" Toaster wearily asked.

"Yeah, thanks to an ANGEL of light! Heh-heh." Both Lampy's remark and beaming smile made Toaster relax for a spell. But the chrome-glazed appliance soon turned and carried on his way regardless.

Lampy did nothing but watch as he left. Now on the high top of the cliff, he took his time and peered down upon the scraggly coyotes, who were staring at him with unknowing, glowing eyes.

Lampy creased his brows and frowned. But that's when he listened closely; they started to whimper. Were vicious, flea-bitten predators supposed to have feelings? He raised his brows again and opened his mouth, utterly confused. Turning around, he gave them one last look before leaving them for good.

* * *

><p>Everything was black and silent. Any distant environmental sound trying to come through barely could. Then suddenly, there was a voice speaking... <em>very <em>close by.

"Hey Coffman, look! I think he's waking up!" it said.

"You think he's waking up, or he _is_ waking up?" replied a more distant voice.

"I can't quite tell."

"Well if you can't tell, what are you doing bringing me over here for?" The second voice was drawing nearer.

There was a brief flash of opening light.

"No hold the phone... I just saw his eyes blink!"

"Are you positive?"

"Ooo, let me see, let me see!" butted in a third voice.

Finally Kirby managed to fully open his eyes so he could see just what, or who, was standing in front in him. And he saw three appliances – a tape recorder, a coffee pot, and lastly, a fan – all of whom were giving him stares.

Kirby lurched backward in an instant. "WHA?!"

"No need to be scared my friend!" proclaimed the coffee pot. "You're safe, cleaned up, not to mention fully powered."

"Agh... something feels strange." The vacuum could feel that his plug had been plugged into something. "...Where the heck am I?"

"Our place!" shouted the blue fan.

"Yes I believe he wants to know where _specifically_," the orange coffee pot clarified. "That would be a... a rickety old radio house!" He displayed the bare remains of the unkept building the appliances were all in. A wooden plank fell to the floor. "See?"

"If you _want _to sound meticulous, then I'm sure you're thinking of a once-decimated radio station," corrected a fourth voice. A lamp rose his lightbulb-head above a peculiar cylinder-shaped machine.

The coffee pot looked to the left. "OH, and there's Wattson toiling away, and Pops too. Keep persevering mes amis!" He waved his fork-arm both at the lamp and at a popcorn popper who was working beside said lamp.

"Will do Coffman, will do." Wattson saluted the pot sarcastically, and Pops just gazed on tiredly.

"They've been helping your ol' buddy on the other side," Coffman explained to Kirby.

"My 'ol' buddy'?"

"Mmm-hm, he's right over here!" said the red tape recorder. "This way!"

He and Coffman led the vacuum cleaner over to the other side of the cylinder-shaped generator, where Air Conditioner could be found resting on the back of a turned bookcase. The other strange appliances gathered around in the what-used-to-be-a room.

Coffman made a judgment of the peaceful-looking unit. "Yes sir, a fine air conditioning fellow I take it."

"You could SAY that," Kirby responded.

That's when the blue fan hopped up to Air Conditioner and studied him closely. She turned her eyes back to the others. "...Is he still alive?" she questioned suspiciously.

"M-maybe try poking him a little?" suggested the tape recorder.

"Or maybe a slight nudge," advised Wattson.

"_Hmmm_." The fan gave these suggestions some pondering before she decided to raise up her plug and spark it with electricity. She then proceeded to zap Air Conditioner's side (mercilessly). The unit instantly awoke, and with a shout.

Pleased, the fan peered over at his cringing face. "Hi there, hi!"

Air Conditioner opened his tightly shut eyes and slowly called attention to the perpetrator. "What was _that _for?!" he demanded.

The fan merely gave him a wide grin.

Satisfied, Coffman then began to speak to everyone. "Okie-dokie then, now that our patients are up and ready to roll, they'd probably like to know firsthand what's been happening!"

"No joke," scoffed Kirby, still in shock. "How'd you find us out in the middle of who-knows-where?"

"Well, we heard a shout," the tape recorder started to explain.

"A BIG one!" interjected the fan.

"It sounded very ticked off." The fan nodded quickly to that. Kirby gave her a look.

"And so we went and found you two knocked out at the bottom of a cliff-side," Coffman finished.

"We're assuming you must've... fallen _off_ somehow." Wattson gazed at Kirby curiously.

A whirring and crashing sound was soon heard, and everybody glanced up.

"_Whoops_." Pops had been trying to maintain the stability of the electric generator the whole time, but she lost control of it.

"Huh?" Wattson blinked his lightbulb once.

"Uh-oh, the tank's gonna blow a gasket!" she exclaimed over the intensifying whir.

Coffman promptly hopped forth. "Let me at the thing!"

Once he got to the generator Pops gave him his instructions. "Here, hold that side together while I take care of the oil!"

Wanting to give instructions too, the blue fan suspended her cord right in Kirby's face. "You should stay back!"

"WHAT'S GOING ON?" yelled the vacuum.

The generator sounded like it was about to explode at any moment. Pops concentrated ever-so-hard on getting its oil cap open. "Almost..."

The cap's lid finally popped.

"_Got it!_"

And out came the excess oil, spilling onto the popcorn popper, as well as everywhere else. The appliances who were watching from a safe distance winced.

Pops looked down at her cord, completely drenched in the black stuff. "Yuck." She shook some of it off.

"All right-all right, here goes!" With a grunt, Coffman then rammed his "shoulder" into the fuel tank, slightly knocking a seam back in place. Then he slipped to the floor. The red tape recorder nodded and clapped for him.

"That was a close one wasn't it?" the fan giggled to Kirby.

"...It sure WAS."

"Hey Vacuum, could you repay us a favor and sweep the oil off the floor?" Wattson unexpectedly requested.

Upon hearing this, Kirby couldn't help but grow a little hesitant. "Well uh, I'm not entirely – "

"Right," Coffman said as he approached the vacuum cleaner, "it should be a cinch now that you're being powered by this big buzzing behemoth!"

"No, hear me out, I can't – "

Before Kirby could finish his sentence, Coffman quickly flipped on his switch and started to rigorously push him across the floor. Kirby coughed and choked with every sweep. Soon enough, Coffman had to stop, for there was no progress being made at all. The oil was still on the floor... and _how_.

"Well this isn't working." Coffman inspected the remaining mess. "Odd."

There was a temporary silence.

"...But HEY, at least AIR CONDITIONING works!" Fan shouted automatically, jabbing her plug in the direction of the cooling unit who was idly sitting on the bookcase. Air Conditioner widened his eyes. "C'mon, try it!" she told him. "Tape Recorder, Tape Recorder! You've _gotta _check this out!"

"Ah! O-kay!" The meager cassette player bounced up to join his friend and take a gander at the anticipated marvel.

After a moment of thought, Air Conditioner sighed quietly, and took a deep breath. He then blew a mighty gale which formed icicles on the two appliances and slid them backwards to where Wattson was standing.

The cooling unit stared down at the power cord attached to him. "Whoa, that's got some real kick," he admitted, continuing to exhale the icy air.

"Boy I'll say," Tape Recorder concurred with a shiver. "It's enough to give my cassette film frostbite!"

Fan shook the icicles off of herself. "_OOO_, and it's minty fresh!" she made a crucial note of.

Tape Recorder snorted to that. "Nice." To which Wattson looked onward in plain annoyance.


	7. Past the Clock

**"Past the Clock"**

* * *

><p>Light shone through the dark woods at last, granting the brand new day. Near a tranquil flowing stream sat a large rock, and behind that rock slept a creature. But it wasn't a woodland creature; it was a lamp. The lamp drowsily raised his head up from the rock and took his time to yawn.<p>

"Good morning everybody!" he exclaimed suddenly, breaking the peace. He then lazily swept his head from one side to another, as if scanning the woods for something – his friends, to be precise.

His eyes snapped open all of a sudden. "Toaster? Blanky? ...Loudmouth?"

There was silence, save for the babbling of the nearby brook. That is until a voice answered his call up close and personal.

"Comfy there?"

With a crazed squawk Lampy scrambled and fell over onto a bunch of rocks. He looked right ahead and realized that Radio, and also Toaster and Blanky, were standing right there, waiting for him to notice.

"Oh HI!" he shouted at them. "Heh, I was getting worried for you guys there for a second." He crossed his eyes and rubbed the side of his head.

Radio, however, gazed down at the quaint and crumbly bed of rocks that the lamp had made for himself. "...I'd be worrying more about _you_ actually."

Toaster was eager to get moving, but not without consulting his friend first. "You feel ready to go Lampy?" he very politely asked.

"Ugh, I _think_ so." Lampy brought himself up from the rock-bed in a sluggish manner. Then he had to take a moment and adjust his lightbulb, aware of its condition. "But I'm feeling just a _little_ bit drained. My bulb might be dimming out a bit." He gave the bulb a few taps to test it. It flickered on and off rather weakly.

"Well that's because we don't have a battery," Toaster had to explain in all honesty.

This sent a jolt of anxiety through Blanky. "Wait, what happens if we run out of energy?"

"We won't!" assured Toaster. "We just have to keep moving; I'm sure we'll find _some_ place where there's power. Come on."

And so the toaster hobbled on, expecting everyone else to follow him.

As Lampy hopped along after Radio and Blanky, he began to contemplate a problem that'd been stirring in his head. "...Say, was this whole search for Kirby _really _the best idea? It's almost as if we didn't think things through enough. Ya know, from every conceptual angle."

"HE'S CATCHING ON FOLKS!" blared Radio.

Toaster abruptly turned back to Lampy. "Whaddyou mean? We couldn't _do_ anything else!"

Radio approached his chrome-glazed friend. "Now you didn't hear it from me, but the lamp's got a point there Toaster. We should've gone and assembled a whole battalion of rescue choppers... or somethin' along those lines."

"_I don't care_ – we didn't have any other choice," Toaster stoutly replied. "Let's keep moving."

The appliances pressed on with Toaster in the lead. But Radio fell behind the rest of them, and soon he stopped completely dead in his tracks. His antenna lurched to the sky and his dial twirled in a frenzied loop. His speaker went haywire.

Blanky, who was closest by, caught ear and eye of the commotion. He gasped. "Something's wrong with Radio!"

The blanket, the lamp, and the toaster gathered around him. "No-no!" the radio made clear. "A signal just flew down on me like a bombshell! Listen up!"

His friends listened in as close as they could to the station he was now tuned into. They began to hear old (and scratchy) music.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, at the exact same time of day, a record was being played on a turntable, apparently on the air. Wattson was leaning on a chair right next to it, sleeping. Trying to sleep, anyway. Pops stood close by, working on untangling some knotted tubes and wires. Air Conditioner was still situated on his overturned bookcase.<p>

Tape Recorder watched as Coffman busily "paced" in Kirby's vicinity, attempting to make heads or tails of the vacuum's condition.

"So, you're on the fritz eh?" surmised the coffee pot. "What might've happened, you think? You got a chewed cord? Perhaps a dent? Mice nipping away at the uh... at the cloth?"

"No, no – I can't really say," Kirby answered. "Anyway, we're uh, grateful for your help and, we'll be headin' off now." He glanced in several different directions. "Soon as I find that wagon."

Tape Recorder's mouth sank into a frown. "Well why do you have to go so soon?" He sounded very disappointed.

Coffman twisted around. "Yeah – "

That's when he caught sight of Fan beginning to pull Kirby's red wagon out into the open via her teeth. "Hey-ey FAN, you headlong impetuous buzzsaw, leave the wagon where it is!"

Fan let go of said wagon, stared straight into the eye of Coffman, and then blew him a raspberry. Coffman pouted at her.

"Thanks," continued the undaunted vacuum, "but I gotta get back to my master. And it looks like you all need to too, dontcha?"

This, strikingly enough, caused Pops to halt her work and look over.

Tape Recorder was right there, looking at Kirby too. "What master?"

"We don't have any masters," said Pops. "We _live_ here."

Kirby blinked once before saying, "_Huh?_"

"Pardon our bluntness," Coffman hastily began, "but we NEVER want ANYTHING to do with masters. Not EVER again."

He stepped up to Air Conditioner out of the blue and pointed his fork at the window unit. "Do you want to know _why_?"

"No."

Coffman turned his back on Air Conditioner. "Because we get nothing out of the deal! And before you can percolate the coffee you'll be at Death's very doorstep!"

With that he hopped to the station's turntable, stopped it, flipped the record over, and started it up again, in turn startling Wattson from his nap.

_Kirby heard a strange kind of music play, and he peered up at a clock hanging above a doorframe, almost from a thread. Air Conditioner listened only from the background. The clock incessantly ticked to the rhythm of the music – harder, louder – until it appeared to shatter instantly. Kirby suddenly found himself in the middle of a purely black setting... flashing a neon color. He glanced to and fro before realizing that behind him stood a dim wall, where the large silhouette of a scythe came slashing through. He then recognized the singing of Coffman, Fan, Wattson, Pops, and Tape Recorder, who were closing in on him. They strapped him down on a hospital bed and shoved him through a flapping door into a psychedelic hospital room, where they pondered over what to do to "operate" on him. Glaring white lights from the dark shone on Kirby from every angle, not just the ceiling. As silhouettes on the wall, one appliance brought out a needle, another wielded electrified defibrillator paddles, and yet another unleashed a saw._

_Now-neon Air Conditioner was not forgotten. Drawing away the curtains to an operation table he was on, Fan and Tape Recorder gave him a large paper which had the words "death certificate" to sign; but he couldn't do it, even with the pen in his mouth. Fan and Tape Recorder then took the paper away and pulled a white blanket over him, tipping his table over, making him fall into a screen and heavily crack it._

* * *

><p>As all this "untold terror" was taking place, Radio was briskly running through the forest, hot on the trail of an intensifying signal. Lampy, Toaster, and Blanky were doing the best they could to follow him, curious yet oh-so disoriented.<p>

"It's comin' from this direction!" shouted Radio, striving for higher and higher ground by overcoming more logs and rocks. Just like a man climbing the tallest mountain.

"This way!" After that proclamation of his he came face-to-face with a giant boulder. Realizing his error, he then decided to make a shy left turn. "No, wait... this way."

Lampy could barely keep up, and he was tiring out fast. "Stop foolin' around wouldja?!" cracked the breath of his voice.

Radio didn't look back as he leaped onto some low-hanging tree branches. "I'm _not_! Just gotta find the ideal spot..." He grunted upon the scaling of a wonky coniferous tree; it was a tough job for someone of his stature. Reaching a satisfactory height within the confines of evergreen needles, the appliance arose and found standing, only a mere baseball field's distance away, a tall glistening radio tower of hope.

Naturally, Radio was ecstatic. "I can see the source fellas! The great silver tower of wholesome citizen broadcasting!"

Toaster, Blanky, and Lampy heard him from far below, and they looked up. Lampy put on a brightened smile. "Oh joy! SANCTUARY!"

Thus the appliances moved forward.

* * *

><p><em>In the realm of musical insanity, which would seem sane to some but not to others, shadows of dead light trees stretched over a deep unseen pit of no return. At the pit's bottom was Kirby, where he was no longer neon (thank goodness), but <em>was_ being backed up into a corner by the five strange appliances. A shadow appeared from behind and sprang out of the wall, causing him to jump in startlement as it opened its "mouth." It shut its mouth and dove into the black floor, creating rolling waves underneath the vacuum cleaner and making him lose his balance. Wattson and Pops caught him before he fell, struggling to hold him all the same. Above the pit, Air Conditioner was attempting to stay on top an intricate web of tilting tracks hanging aloft, but they kept sliding him around in different directions. Eventually a big wooden mallet swung by and knocked him into a black elevator with a red interior. It closed its door on him, dinged, and cascaded down the pit with great velocity. It stopped and then spat him out, where he collided with Kirby, who had just recovered his balance. The two went tumbling into a lake of crude oil, but they arose and were able to float in the liquid. They gazed up to the pit's opening, which was white and bright with multiple hospital lights circling. Coffman, Fan, Wattson, Pops, and Tape Recorder formed their own circle above, nothing but large silhouettes of their former selves with colored outlines. They each waved goodbye to the vacuum and air conditioner as the two receded into smaller forms. The bright light overhead dimmed and then slammed like a metal door, leaving an echo._

* * *

><p>Once the music had ceased broadcasting from the source, Kirby's friends were found trudging up a green hill under the sun. Radio was first to reach the top, but Blanky, Toaster, and Lampy each came to join him respectively; and they stopped at what they beheld.<p>

"Oh, well, this is really something," Radio said. In front of everybody sat nothing but a much bigger hill – the radio tower at the top – but no human civilization surrounding. Although there lay a few small shacks, gravel roads, and rescue vehicles, everything had been abandoned... and ravaged by age.

"There's no houses; there's no town!" cried Blanky regretfully.

"There's not nobody." The radio got in the final ascertaining words.

Toaster stared in disbelief. "Weird."

At the ravaged radio station up high, a red tape recorder was tossing out some unneeded medical supplies with a sweep of his film and cassettes. He was about to head back "inside" the crumbled remnants of the station's front wall when he took notice of the radio, toaster, lamp, and blanket. His mouth dropped open, and with the utmost urgency he called out: "_Coffman!_ You wouldn't believe this, but we've got some more drifters!"

"...What, WHERE? Where are they?" A certain coffee pot was more than earnest to see, judging by his immediate popping out of nowhere. He peered at the four and made a big grin. "Oh, why hello!"

The four returned his peering with a mixture of surprised and unsure expressions.

"Welcome my mechanical kinsmen! Step on up; don't be shy!" On a whim, Toaster and the gang came forth to the radio station's hill.

With his invite in place Coffman hopped all the way down some gravel to greet the visitors like a good host. He reached Toaster first and offered to help.

"Here, lemme give you a fork – hand."

"Thanks." Toaster took his fork-hand slowly and carefully.

As the appliances headed up the hill's gravel road, the coffee pot began an introduction of sorts. "Now if you're wondering what we're doing here at such a godforsaken dump, well, it's quite the story!" Lampy couldn't help but notice the partially buried remains of a flipped ambulance off to the side.

Tape Recorder had descended the hill path, and he tried to nudge at Coffman while he hopped past. "More like it's quite the _brew_! Eh? EH?"

"Yes, way to blunder my calembour," was Coffman's dry retort. "Now then!" he continued. "You'll see the, ahem, 'decimated radio station' appears to have been damaged beyond all repair, BUT we've devised ways of our OWN for upkeep! Let's see." Coffman surveyed the area with Toaster still in hand. "We gathered some stuff from a trash yard over at the campsite there and discovered how to harness oil power from old broken-down vehicles; kinda iffy business if you ask me; _but_ nevertheless we inevitably, _unequivocally _got our personal generator system to purr like a behaved and well-contented kitten..."

The four appliances proceeded to push further up, oblivious to what lay ahead of them, and more than ready to drown out the background noise of Coffman's voice. He kept going and going and _going_...

"And it wasn't _too_ much a hassle for our lamp and popper experteers... ever since they bore witness to the repeated dismantling of their friends and family they've been able to synthesize a much wider assortment of gadgets from the deceased – "

And that's when the appliances made it the station's open entrance, where they could see everything inside. One thing they saw inside, however, was totally unexpected. A familiar figure, standing quite upright in the sunlight.


	8. United Again

**United Again**

* * *

><p>"...KIRBY!" Toaster burst out.<p>

He, Lampy, Blanky, and Radio each rushed past the much-too-talkative Coffman, efficaciously spinning him around and jumbling his yap.

"Eh-ga-ha?" he stuttered.

"At last!" rejoiced Radio. "Baggy Eyes comin' into the light!" He and the others found themselves reuniting with their favorite upright vacuum cleaner, who peered over in bemused astonishment to see them actually there.

The secretive air conditioner, in the meantime, could see them all the way from the bookcase to the far left, and he inanimated himself straight away.

"We were looking all over for you!" Toaster told Kirby upon their convergence.

"You know we couldn't leave _you_ behind!" Blanky went to give the vacuum a warm yellow hug.

The hug in turn caused Kirby to speak up. "Oh I know it all right." He flipped his eyes over to the _other_ five appliances who were there, watching the affair. "Just remember to keep at a distance." He didn't want to be seen with a "baby."

Not quite understanding this, the blanket granted him his space and slinked down.

"So how're ya doin' there Kirby?" Lampy asked, desiring to incite a conversation. "Have ya been handling the wild side okay?"

While the lamp and the rest of the gang were chatting, Tape Recorder's face became noticeably concentrative as he viewed all of _those_ appliances side by side. It was almost as if they symbolized a plucky team of legendary heroes. Then it struck his memory banks.

"...Oh my goodness gracious."

Wattson shifted his focus from the visitors to the now-agape tape deck. "You got something to share with the rest of us?"

"It's those five appliances! Don't you see?!" Tape Recorder bounced in a contained frenzy and jabbed his cassette. "_They're_ the ones who snuffed out the Saint!"

Hearing such a confuzzling statement, Toaster looked up and gave the strange appliances his full attention. "...Have we met somewhere before?" His eyebrows lowered a smidge.

Fan, who was standing not too far from Tape Recorder, closed her eyes and face-plugged. "_Aah_, of course!" Next, her eyes opened. "...OH! Oh-oh-oh! Play the tape! Play it, it's classic!"

On cue, Tape Recorder proceeded to open his tape drive and therein place one of his cassettes. With the other cassette he punched down one of his teeth, or rather, the "play" button. And when the tape played, a bloodcurdling scream rang out, lasting a whole five seconds' worth of time. For some reason, it sounded like a man with a glandular problem.

The tape stopped, and Tape Recorder removed his cassette. "Yeah, well we've sort of met!" he chuckled shyly.

Coffman had to let this new information sink in. "Hmm. Why didn't I realize this earlier?" He rotated to Kirby and studied him with his single-but-keen eye. In response the vacuum looked around uncomfortably.

Coffman's keen eye squinted. "You Hoovers must all look alike to me."

Ignoring the coffee pot's outstanding breakthrough, Wattson attempted to display a friendly gesture as he held out his plug to Toaster. "Welp, it's been a long time!" he stated. "Put her there fellow appliance mate!"

"_Look now!_ Over here!" An offscreen exclamation from Blanky drew the eyes of the toaster away.

Wattson watched as Toaster receded from his plug offering. "Sorry, we'll get back to you on that," Toaster said. "Hey GUYS!"

He left, along with his tag-alongs Lampy and Radio; clearly they were more interested in something else. Wattson retracted and awkwardly rubbed his neck as Coffman wandered to his side, wondering just what was up.

It was a momentous occasion. There Air Conditioner sat, on his bookcase, trying to keep as still as possible; but once he heard the clanking and clattering of some very recognizable appliances drawing near, he had no choice but to awaken, roll his eyes, and acknowledge their presence.

Blanky, Toaster, Lampy, Radio, and eventually Kirby gathered around him. The former three were prepared to ask tons of questions.

Blanky started first. "Air Conditioner! Is it really you?!"

"'Course it is."

Toaster came next. "YOU look well! How'd you get all the way out into the forest?"

Kirby was the one who answered that question. "I found him with the rest of the old cottage riffraff and dragged him out!"

"Wow, sounds nice!" commented Lampy. "So uh, you'll get to come with us when we head on, back to the city?"

"Hey yeah, that's a great idea!" Toaster remarked – as Lampy nodded in self-agreement. "You might get to see the Master again after so long!"

Kirby sure didn't like the sound of this. "Ugh, if only to prove a couple o' _points_ with him." He and Air Conditioner quickly exchanged "death" glares.

With the plan already set, Radio got to hustling in an instant. "Then come on, let's make like those daring Black Friday-ins!" He began to waddle off.

He stopped, however, when his vacuum pal started confessing his true-and-honest inner thoughts. "Ahh..." Kirby sighed, "look here fellas. After all this, _stuff_ that's been goin' on lately, I figure I oughta... I dunno, just find an antique shop or somethin' and move on there."

Toaster lurched backward; he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "_Huh?_ An _antique_ shop?! W-w-what about the Master?"

"What _about_ him?" Coffman appeared out of nowhere, same as he'd done before. "This old bean knows masters are ingrates and that working for 'em's a waste of time."

"What?!" vociferated Radio, instantly whisking back. "Who's responsible for this brainwashing? Could it be... _thou?_" He stuck his antenna at Wattson, who had taken a seat on a tiny footstool.

"No brainwashing," replied Wattson overtly. "It's 'fact.'"

"It's not like I've lost my MIND," Kirby wanted to ensure. "I just don't wanna run the risk of things..."

Toaster sighed deeply at the implication of a possible garbage toss. "You _are_ going to get better Kirby; really, don't be thinking otherwise." He switched over to the standby appliances. "And I'm not sure where you all are coming from, but we have a _good_ master. Maybe you should come along too."

"NOPE, nay, it's quite alright," Coffman answered with so much as a fork-handwave. "We're fine exactly where we are."

Pops suddenly poked up next to him, and the orange coffee pot shot her a glance. "What do you want?"

"C'mere." She grabbed him by the handle with her cord.

Coffman sent Toaster and friends a dubious facial message. "Whoop, excusez-moi." And with that he was pulled out and away, apparently to have a little talk with his compadres.

Toaster, Lampy, Radio, and Blanky were trying to resist the urge to eavesdrop as the other appliances engaged in a bunch of discouraged whispering. So the four stood and waited patiently. Lampy tapped on his bulb and Radio shuffled his "feet" about the floor – to pass the time, of course.

Finally, after much deliberation, Wattson, Pops, Fan, Coffman, and Tape Recorder broke their circle and turned to face their guests. "Um," began Tape Recorder, "we _are_ going to be staying here, if you don't mind, but uh, surely you'd like to hang loose for a while and... recharge?"

* * *

><p>The once sunny sky, which could be marveled at from inside the roofless radio house, had now become a less-than-chipper shade of gray. This change in weather, however, bore no significance on an intense chess match being played by the likes of Lampy and Wattson. (One of them was currently plugged into the electric generator nearby.) Their chessboard consisted of colored-in squares and bits of trash serving as chess pieces, but at least Wattson knew the rules of the game. He also knew how to win.<p>

"Checkmate," he said, moving a paper wad forward and sideways.

Lampy stared down at the board, completely dumbfounded. "Huh? How was _that_ a fair move?"

"The knight goes up two, over one, and traps the king!" Wattson tapped the board quick as a flash. "Simple!"

But Lampy grew mighty suspicious. "...Can I take your word on it verbatim?"

"_YES_, cross my wires!" Wattson was now on the brink of sobbing.

Meanwhile, Fan could be seen on the other side of the "office room" playing with Radio's dial. She kept forcibly twisting and switching it, perhaps trying to figure out how the music magically changed by means of her prongs.

Radio wasn't the most inviting of her methodologies. "Careful!" he warned. "Easy now. This Boast Toastie doesn't wanna be walking a mile in the vacuum's shoes, ha."

In response Fan just swished her cord aside. "Oh pshaw... I'm way careful!" She then prepared to have at the dial again.

Underneath the tall silver tower in the shady remainder of a booth, Pops stood at a table cluttered with electronic equipment, busily channeling electricity into a small square device with her own two prongs.

Tape Recorder had been keeping watch over the lounging appliance guests, and he was concerned that they were just about done recharging. He edged by the popcorn popper in haste. "Hurry!" he implored. "We don't have a lot of time!"

"It's almost patched!" Pops replied. "Now relax or I won't be able to finish."

As she turned to adjust the knobs on a sophisticated piece of machinery with a blipping screen, the cassette player watched Fan dance to Radio's music, and Lampy and Wattson argue over chess piece "functions."

"Yeesh." He clenched his teeth tight.

"Okay here, take it!" Pops suddenly tossed Tape Recorder the tiny chip she'd welded.

"Ahh!" Tape Recorder struggled to grab it in his cassettes, not having fingers and all. After playing some hot potato with it, he got his grip, and then he gingerly carried it over.

Fan realized what her recorder friend was doing amidst her dancing, and she danced even more distractingly as he circled around Radio and sneaked up on the red music box from behind. He opened Radio's battery compartment, placed the chip inside, and closed it.

But Radio noticed this and immediately flipped around. "Whoa now, what would _YOU_ be doing back there?"

Tape Recorder lifted his cassettes in timid defense. "Nothing, nothing."

With that Radio addressed Fan as she reached for his dial once more. "Well gee it's true! We've finally managed to tear down the walls of the privacy zone establishment!"

Fan confusedly withdrew her plug from him.

Toaster had been resting against a beanbag chair for the time being, but he gradually awoke and arose, stretching his levers. "I'M feeling rejuvenated," he claimed. "How's everybody else doing?"

Lampy quit wrestling Wattson over a bottle cap and looked at Toaster. "...Oh I'm good!"

"Same over here," affirmed Radio from the side.

"Okay then, I think we're ready." Toaster detached himself from an extension cord and sauntered forward while Blanky joined him, Radio and Lampy too. Kirby appeared in the background, pulling his red wagon, which now contained one air conditioning unit.

The toaster thought it best to offer full gratitude to Coffman, Wattson, Fan, Pops, and Tape Recorder, who were each gathering at the site. "We can't thank you enough for all your help!" he said to them. "This was really great!"

"It's our pleasure," Wattson returned. "Anytime."

"Mmm-hm!" hummed Coffman. "Now go make tracks before that wrenched Fan decides to tag along for the ride."

The fan in question was spotted at an entirely different place, reaching for the dials on the air conditioner. Air Conditioner twisted away from her. "NO, uh-uh." His dials were _not_ for appliances to mess with. Fan refrained with a sad expression on her face.

"Gladly," Kirby huffed, accepting Coffman's suggestion.

Therefore the vacuum began drawing the wagon around, and as he did so, the rest of the original gang followed him downhill from the station. But Blanky turned back for a moment and waved to the strange appliances.

"Goodbye!" he called.

Toaster took heed of this and also swiveled back to finalize the parting. "And thanks again!"

At first Coffman didn't know what to do with such a mannerly farewell. "...Why yes!" he exclaimed. "Au revoir! The best of luck to you on your voyage!" He waved his fork-arm at the lot as they distanced from the radio station and from view. But he then traded glances with his strange fellow appliances, and together they gazed out into the gloomy range of the forest and the mountains.


	9. Off to a Rocky Start

**Off to a Rocky Start**

* * *

><p>Across the dull terrain under the shadowed trees trekked the six appliances, most of whom had to either crawl, walk or hop. First, they pushed through a dense field of tall grass. Next, they crossed a deep river gorge using a fallen tree. (Kirby was having trouble pulling the wagon over the uproots, but in the end he managed.) Lastly, they were challenged with the task of climbing a dizzying mountain slope, having to make the most out of remotely evened-out rocks for stepping stones. This was the place where Kirby had the most difficulty, bar none. He was forced to lift the wagon, not just pull, the slope was so steep. Toaster, Lampy, Blanky, and Radio would flock back down to him to assist, but he kept refusing their offers.<p>

* * *

><p>Eventually the team found much more even ground so that they could go forward moreso than up. They were now at elevations higher than they'd ever been before.<p>

Curiously enough, after a short while, an inquisitive crow appeared on top of Air Conditioner, looking down at him. Air Conditioner didn't return the look. The crow then began to peck at Air Conditioner's eyebrow vents, nabbing some insects that had gotten trapped inside. It wasn't long until the window unit grew sick of this and blew the feathered pest right off. The crow catapulted into the air and in confusion flew away, cawing as it departed. The echoes of its caws croaked from the sky; and from there, rain started to fall.

Toaster held out his lever to catch the raindrops as he peered upward. "Ah great, it's raining."

Kirby sighed gruffly. "Just what I needed."

Toaster then turned to the vacuum who'd been lagging behind the whole journey. "You _sure_ you don't want any extra amp power?" he queried.

"YEP! I got it!" Kirby exclaimed in a pseudo-cheery manner. "All one hundred n' fifty some-odd pounds!"

As the rain continued to fall, Blanky had to stop crawling for a moment. He held himself and shivered, now too damp for comfort. "_Brrr_... it's getting cold."

Lampy stared up more slopes of rocks. "Are we almost to the city outskirts?" he inquired of Radio. "How much further is it?"

Radio was located above, making more progress than the rest of the group. "Judging by the strength of this signal..." he began to inform, "I'd say it's not one shy of a few leagues."

The lamp frowned and stared down. "_That's_ a relief," he muttered to himself.

"...But I've just about reached this mountain's summit! By the sweet hair of Hillary we're near fit to dub ourselves the electronic Sherpas of the Saint Elias Range!"

Now pleasantly surprised, Lampy lifted his head in the most positive way. "Oh, then that's REALLY a relief then!" He carried through by leaping to the slope.

But his movement to another location revealed Toaster and Blanky in the background. Toaster was quick to sense Blanky's struggles as he attempted to move his drenched blanket self. So the toaster shifted his focus and called out at the overzealous radio and lamp. "Hang on you two! Blanky's getting soaked!"

"_No_, it's okay!" the blanket tried to assure, only out of breath. "I can keep going!"

Toaster shook his chrome for repose. "Nuh-uh, you need to take a break." His eyes evaluated the remaining wet ground to cover. "...As a matter of fact, we ALL ought to."

Lampy and Radio had refrained from additional climbing; though only Lampy took the initiative to look around for shelter from his rock. "Hmm." Suddenly, he spotted at starboard a little cavern tucked away in the bedrock.

"Hey, I see a cave!" he enthused. "Maybe we can stop over there for a bit!"

Without delay Toaster glanced in the same direction as Lampy, and he too saw the cave. "Good eye." He then motioned to the appliance who needed rest the most.

"This way Kirby!"

Toaster plodded offscreen, while Kirby pulled the wagon and Air Conditioner along apathetically.

Once the entirety of tired appliances had reached the mouth of the cave, they studied the dark interior of stalactites and stalagmites before deciding to move in from the pouring rain. As Toaster, Lampy, Blanky and Radio shuffled inside, Kirby drove toward a craggy stone bump and rolled over it. But the red wagon as a result toppled and fell over, sending Air Conditioner out sideways. He grunted upon impact on hard, gravel-covered ground.

Toaster turned right away and gasped. "Air Conditioner! Are you all right?!"

"Didja get hurt?" also questioned Lampy nearby.

"No... no," Air Conditioner responded, "everything's just dandy, ya know, with all the rocks jammed up my vents, and the – "

"Yeah yeah... rocks," interrupted Kirby as he drove past the unit and the wagon. Without so much as an apology.

Radio, in the meantime, was ruminating about the heavy rain he observed. "Hey ya know what this reminds me of?" he brought up. "D-Day, the full-scale attack at Normandy – was raining cats and dogs out there on the coast."

Lampy creaked his head to him, with the face of a skeptic. "You weren't actually there, were you?"

"No, but I had a Canadian friend who was marching in the infantry. He gave his life that day..." Radio's voice trailed off somewhat.

This caught Blanky's interest for better or worse as he wrung himself dry. "Oh wow, how bad was it?"

Radio perked to that, and then he slowly stepped toward and loomed over the now-intimidated blanket. "Bad enough to shatter the very foundations of your young, _FRAGILE_ psyche."

"Ooh, then tell us what happened!" requested Lampy out of eagerness. "The suspense is already killing me!"

"Me too!" claimed Blanky softly.

Kirby was standing behind them both. "...I'm, goin' over here." He exited the picture.

* * *

><p>That evening, as the rain kept pouring outside the cave, Lampy, Blanky, and Toaster were gathered 'round a boulder, on top of which Radio stood, weaving a riveting tale and acting it out along the way. Lampy's light shone on him and foreboding music played from his speaker for dramatic effect. Kirby and Air Conditioner were strewn further away, not caring to partake.<p>

"It was as bleak and dark a dawn as there could ever be during war," Radio began. "The ocean's waves were sloshing up on Juno as the troops marched along a wide and grueling path of sand. Gritty, grueling sand. One of them'd gone mad after his trip over high seas and decided to toss his only firearm back in the water, shouting at the top of his lungs: 'Gimme a pair of brass knuckles; we're not in Canada anymore! Lemme get myself acquainted with these Heinies; I'll go stomping from Love to Nan smashing each of their lights out individually!'"

Lampy drew back, anticipating pain of some sort.

"So he kissed both fists and charged into enemy lines. He had something to prove, this heroic maniac, no matter how many rifles were staring him in the face. That's when four of his fellow troops did what they could to keep him alive: they pinned him to the ground, leaving themselves completely at the mercy of enemy fire! And all the man could hear from that vantage point was the rolling of tanks along the shore. And all he could FEEL were the quakes of landmines a mere two feet from his head!"

"Yikes!" the lamp squawked next. Blanky and Toaster could only gape.

"But throughout his struggle, he heard a voice. A voice so bold, so outreaching, it carried over from the memories of those at Omaha to _him_ and finally put him at peace. 'With confidence in our armed forces – with the unbounding determination of our people – we will gain the inevitable triumph – so help us God.'"

And there the radio paused. Meanwhile, Air Conditioner thought this to mean the ham had finally simmered down, and that at last he could get some shut-eye. The cooling unit began to close his eyes.

BOOM!

BANG!

The sudden barrage of guns and bombs and other annoying war sounds rattled him wide awake. Unthinkable. This was the last straw. Air Conditioner furrowed his brows.

"Would someone put a cork in that static box!" he yawped.

Radio heard this all the way from the boulder, and he paused his war sounds and scampered down to give the air conditioner a stern talking-to. "H-hey, hey," he asserted, "I'm tryin' to get to the grand apogee here; now if you wouldn't mind I want NO interruption."

"The _grand apogee_?" Air Conditioner back-sassed. "Man has that antenna been picking up the wrong signals."

Radio was stunned, and so very offended. "_OH?_ Let's hear you say that after I give you a blow for the entire Companion Cavalry!" He rushed forward to joust the unit with said antenna.

But Toaster intervened between them both. "Wait! _Stop_ Radio!" In the end he kept Radio from engaging in his fierce antenna-stabbing session.

Air Conditioner then looked over and jested something. "Thank goodness Toaster! He sure would've gone and poked _me_ full o' holes."

In a snap Kirby the vacuum cleaner came into view, growling deeply, and spouting at the sarcastic appliance: "Just do us a favor already and QUIT IT WITH THE EXHAUST!"

Toaster knew what needed to be done. "Now hold on guys, let's not start this up again," he told everybody.

"Yeah," acceded Lampy, "I'm still itching to know what happened to those poor soldiers." And he literally itched his neck.

"_I'm_ not..." murmured Blanky.

Next Toaster switched to the vacuum. "What's wrong Kirby?"

"I'll tell ya what's wrong! _HIM!_" Kirby threw his plug in Air Conditioner's direction.

Air Conditioner just lay there on his side, miffed. "Perfect logic, right there."

"ALL DAY," Kirby went on, "I've had to lug around this big lazy block who can't hold up his own weight! THEN he expects me to listen to him like he's some sorta know-it-all backseat driver..."

"Kirby – " Toaster tried to say.

"He'd never even SEEN the outside of the cottage 'til I yanked him out!"

Lampy gave this some deep thought and inquiry. "You, _could_ be right..." he started, "but, what does all that have to show for, exactly?"

The sound of Air Conditioner's voice gripped everyone's attention. "You know what? I've had my fair share of 'discourtesies' but you don't hear somebody like me giving a crank. You really wanna see what's 'wrong' about this? 'Cause I'd sure like to; I'd like to see how practical it is yakking on about some stupid aches and throbs when it's all worth ICE!"

"It's not worth _ANYTHING_ having to put up with YOU!" Kirby yelled at the unit.

"Well I didn't BEG to be mollycoddled!" Air Conditioner yelled back. "But _SURE_, that's only because it comes down to nothin' but ME and my so-called INDOLENCE which I – "

Instantly, the air conditioner stopped himself dead... emphasis on dead. Coming to grips with what could happen, he shut his eyes tightly, and even began taking in gulps of air to calm himself down.

"...That's it; there you go," came Toaster's more soothing, albeit worried, voice. "Deep breaths; just take it easy."

"Yeah," Lampy chuckled nervously. "We don't want you exploding like the last time!"

Kirby mumbled something cold under his own breath. "Hmph, maybe goes for SOME of us."

There was a chilling silence. Kirby's friends visibly saddened and averted their eyes elsewhere.

Too many seconds had passed for Radio. "Well, ahem," the thespian spoke, "where did I leave off at that yarn spin? Let's see now..."

"Sorry Radio," said Toaster wearily, "but I think it'd be better if we go ahead and rest for the night. We've gotta save our energy." With that he wandered away to find a sleeping spot.

Lampy sighed and lowered his head. "I guess that's a good idea." So he also hopped off.

"Fine by me," stated Kirby.

As the vacuum cleaner and the blanket diverged out of view, Radio's last chances for an audience dwindled. "Oh... all right then." The clock radio hesitated his next line. "Uh... goodnight everybody." His antenna conclusively drooped to the ground.

* * *

><p>During that same night, while everybody else was fast asleep within the dark cave, Blanky couldn't stop stirring and moaning about in insomnia. He finally opened his tired eyes – rubbing them too – as if giving up on any hope of slumber. A few moments later, however, he caught the sound of yipping, howling coyotes outside in the distance. He immediately gasped and crawled over to where Toaster was situated, seeking refuge.<p>

"Toaster? _Toaster?_" he whispered.

The toaster awoke very slowly, and soon noticed the innocent blanket approaching. "Hm?" he questioned half-consciously. "What is it Blanky?"

"I can't sleep." Blanky proceeded to snuggle right up to Toaster's side. "Kirby and Air Conditioner were really fighting." He buried his mouth underneath his wool.

Toaster understood, and he gently rubbed Blanky's head. "Yeah... things haven't been going too well for 'em." He sighed in contemplation. "I'm not sure what we can do about it right now."

Hearing this though, Blanky stared down hard for a brief time. "...Why does Air Conditioner have to be so angry too?"

Toaster had to find some way to explain the issue; his eyes darted away. "Well, he still needs to see the Master and, we probably aren't being the nicest to him..." The toaster turned his attention to the vacuum cleaner, who lay flat on his bag in heavy sleep.

"Was _anyone_ nice to him?" Blanky asked next. "Back in the cottage, I mean?"

Toaster quickly aimed to jog his memory. "...I-I don't know. It's hard to remember. I tried talking to him once; he just wanted to be left alone."

"No one _else_ tried talking to him?"

"No – not from what I could tell. I thought he was doing okay by himself all that time, but, that shouldn't have been the case. We shouldn't have just ignored him."

At the other end of the cave, someone besides the blanket had been listening to these words. It was the air conditioner; he couldn't sleep either. He opened one eye first and then mulled all this over – with a softer expression than one would ever think possible. Weren't those dimwits just trying to prove something?


	10. What a Friendly Excavator

**What a Friendly Excavator**

* * *

><p>The night sky that had glazed a high mountain hill with blue leisurely faded into a partly cloudy day, brightening the hill to some of its original colors. Unsurprisingly, six small traveling appliances appeared up top, and were getting ready to head <em>down<em> a slope for a change. But, first and foremost, they stopped to take in the daytime scenery laid out right before their eyes.

"It's the city!" peeped Blanky with glee.

However, the perceived city buildings still stood expansively far away, with acres of land and miles of suburban sprawl plunked in between the appliances and their destination.

Toaster backcapped. "Oh..."

"Kind of," remarked Lampy.

Radio wanted to get the lead out as soon as possible. "I got the bebop," he reminded everyone. "Shouldn't be more than a few more miles, homeboys."

"Then let's go already!" Kirby barked, waiting to pull the red wagon – and the air conditioning cargo within it.

Toaster had a couple important things he wanted to cover beforehand. "Now wait a minute – what's the game plan? Do you wanna find the repair shop first or make a beeline for the Master's place?"

Kirby was silent, if only for a tick. "Whatever _works_."

"...Okay." Toaster's question hadn't been sufficiently answered, so he turned to the others. "Thoughts, anyone?"

"Um," began Lampy while hastening his thought train, "I'm imagining that we _should_ look a little more presentable. We can get fixed up at the shop first."

Following that idea, Radio looked down at Blanky, slightly repulsed. "And the blanket's got folds of dust UNDERNEATH folds of dust."

Blanky acknowledged himself, all dirtied up from so much crawling; and he gave in. "Yeah," he breathed, "a machine wash _would_ be nice."

"All right, then it's settled. Shop first." Thus Toaster permitted the resuming of their journey. "Think you can carry on for a little longer there, Kirby?" he also asked his vacuum friend.

"I'll HAVE to," the vacuum friend countered. "Don't give me any o' that high-handed bunk."

He passed the toaster and the rest and went on downhill, roughly handling the rocking wagon. In secrecy, Toaster and Lampy exchanged very befuddled, very unnerved stares.

* * *

><p>From a little beyond the countryside and suburbs, the town was rife with cars and pedestrians this time of day, which would prove a real hassle for the appliances who didn't wish to be seen alive. Stoplights changed at a frantic pace, people were out shopping at nearby strip malls, and green neighborhoods contained both playful children and metal-rusting lawn sprinklers.<p>

After hours of ducking, dodging, and navigating around, the daresome six-some arrived at the corner of an unbusy street, hiding in the shadow of a large trash can. Lampy arrived last, hopping along, worn to the wire.

"Whew," Lampy huffed, "stop, go, stop, go... masters around every corner!"

"So where do we go from here?" Blanky asked Toaster.

Toaster intently rubbed his "chin." "Hmm... I wonder."

The sunbeam appliance then stepped halfway out of the shade into the bright of day. Scanning the area carefully, his eyes soon descended upon a not-too-far construction site, roughly bordered by wooden fencing and ascending with steel girders. A street clock tower to the right read "twelve o' clock," but there were two vehicles still out shoveling and dumping dirt into piles. Very huge, very yellow vehicles.

Excitable, Toaster instantly got an idea. "AH! Let's see if the guys over there can direct us!" He pointed his lever at what he was seeing, and nearly everyone else's eyes followed.

Kirby made sure to take a good look at the macho machines as they constructed their building complex. "_Those_ things, huh?" he questioned, narrowing his gaze.

Sensing a certain danger, Radio appeared next to Slots as swiftly as he could. "Uh, hah, now listen here Toaster. Asking the likes of heavy machinery's a faulty idea at best."

"How do you know?" Toaster skepticized.

"Why I once knew a construction fella named Carl who'd left the engine on to one of his tractors. He was going out to move a bunch o' timber in the forefront when the tractor shifted its own gears. Ran him right over when his back was turned."

Radio's story managed to shake Lampy. "Ouch! Maybe we shouldn't go anywhere near 'em," he aptly reasoned.

But Toaster wasn't at all persuaded otherwise by this. "Suck it up, _both_ of you. We're doing this to help Kirby, remember?"

The vacuum cleaner responded by sighing and groaning at the same time.

"I'm going on," Toaster concluded. And he began striding into the open and crossing the street that lay between him and his targets of interest.

"Toaster wait!" called Radio. But Toaster didn't stop, much less turn around.

So the small radio backed up slowly, until he stepped next to Kirby's red wagon. He then noticed Air Conditioner sitting in there, asleep and snoring.

"Hey you, get up." He whacked the unit's face with his antenna.

Air Conditioner awoke with a face-sting, and he was understandably irritable. "Wouldja just let me sleep?!" he exclaimed.

"No," said Radio, "Toaster's about to negotiate with these neanderthals on behalf of the team; show some reverence for the guy."

Almost not wanting to know, yet desiring to keep up to date with everything, Air Conditioner peered ahead and noticed the gargantuan contraptions persisting in their work.

* * *

><p>The incessant noise of motors, steam, and dirt-piling came on much louder as the brave little toaster entered the zone of the construction site. (Sure enough, his friends followed him close behind.) The yellow boom of a towering, mud-splotched excavator passed overhead, and it reached down into a giant hole in the ground near the "ant-sized" appliances. Despite his stature, however, Toaster accumulated all the courage he could and boldly spoke up to the industrial machine standing away from him.<p>

"Hey. E-excuse me!"

While digging up another bucket-mouthfull of dirt, the excavator lurched its neck-like boom in place. It opened an orange eye, located on its "jaw" hinge. Its black pupil then flipped to the source of the bold voice.

"Yeah, hi," Toaster continued. "We're looking for a repair shop in this general area – could you help us find it?"

The excavator gradually lifted its head and dropped its dirt load.

"An APPLIANCE repair shop?" Toaster tried to clarify.

Radio came to his side to provide some aid. "Ya know, kinda like a hardware store! Only... without the omnipresent pesticide aroma."

The excavator tilted its bucket-head out of a strange curiosity. And finally, she burst into laughter.

"Ah-ha-ha-ha-_HAAA!_"

Radio perked, and Toaster put on the most alienated of expressions.

"Yo Bulldozer! _Bulldozer!_" yelled Excavator in the other direction. "Get over here!"

A less-intimidating contraption, a bulldozer, suddenly appeared, wondering what was going on.

Excavator directed Bulldozer's attention to Toaster, Radio, Lampy, Blanky, and Kirby below. "Now aren't those the most precious lil' gizmos you ever had the pleasure of SEEIN'?"

Bulldozer acknowledged them straight upon staring down. "Ah yeah, they ARE precious!" he agreed, as his big yellow shovel formed an even bigger smile.

"I mean, would you eye the one in that wagon?!" Excavator pushed further. "That's so dang _sweet_!"

Bulldozer next focused on the air conditioner in the red wagon. "Sure is! I can't name the last time I saw somethin' _nearly_ as cute!"

Air Conditioner bitterly avoided eye contact, humiliated, while Kirby grew evermore agitated. "Look, can ya help us find the joint or not?!" he bellowed.

Excavator drew back languidly and whistled in an astonished manner. "No use gettin' your cord in a tangle there, Sweepy. We got plenty o' dirty work as it is."

"Truer words!" Bulldozer added to that. And the two construction vehicles shared a good laugh together.

Kirby closed his eyes in annoyance. "For crying out loud..."

Eventually Excavator and Bulldozer's laughter died down. "Ha-ha-ha," finished Excavator, before turning to fully address her partner. "But they sound in mighty need of our services, ah?"

Bulldozer nodded quite solemnly to the thought.

So the excavator sidestepped her tracks parallel to the appliances. "Alright, _can_ the jibber-jabber!" she ordered, moving forward. But, by reflex, the appliances moved backward.

"Ya see now I was never one much for givin' pointers – " she lowered her boom into a pouncing position, "I'm more the strong silent get-her-done type, ah-ha."

The appliances ceased moving backward, and Kirby rose a brow.

Excavator broke the suspense. "So. Y'all ready for some basic transaction?" She readied herself and prepared to charge. "'Cause _here I come!_"

She unhooked her jaws wide open and swooped down at the machines like a hawk. Reacting, they jumped back in a scattered mess of screaming fright, leaving Excavator's bucket to smash into and quake the ground. It was enough to give a man multiple heart attacks at once.

After her apparent failed effort, Excavator lifted her bucket and coughed out dirt. "Agh. Gizmos tryin' to make with the funny business." She glanced at her reliable partner on the sidelines. "Bulldozer, take care of ol' Dustbowl down there while I put the leashes on these pups."

"But Excavator..." he began.

"Don't worry for nothin'!" she corrected. "You'll know what to do!" And she also approached him closely, with something to inform him about. "_We've only done this a _million_ times!_"

Pondering this for a second or two, Bulldozer performed a rather hasty nod. "Right. 'Kay, I'm on it. You can count on me."

Bringing the plan to action, he drove ahead of Excavator and eclipsed a surprised Air Conditioner with his shadow. It was only a matter of moments before the other appliances watched him pick up Air Conditioner in his shovel (and the red wagon Kirby abandoned), back himself as needed, and haul away the merchandise, easy as pie.

"Hey!" Toaster shouted in alarm at Bulldozer's departure. But Excavator soon stomped one of her burly tracks in his way.

"_C'mon_, you're just makin' this transaction difficult!" she teased.

From the remaining appliances' perspective, there was no sense in sticking around. Toaster, Lampy, Radio, Blanky, and Kirby ran from her as fast as their pegs, bases, wool, and wheels would allow. They found a promising hiding place behind a tall dirt mound and briefly congregated there.

As everyone else panted, Kirby stared, wide-eyed. "Well SHE'S nuts!"

"Whaddo we do now?!" Lampy pleaded to Toaster.

"We can't let her _EAT_ us," fretted Blanky.

It didn't take long for Toaster to choose from his array of options. "Let's just try and sneak away..." he whispered. "Quickly!"

The five heard the loud echoing creak of the nearing Excavator and immediately dashed off elsewhere, wanting nothing more than to exit the construction site now.

"Oh what a dreadful turn of events," commentated Radio at the most inappropriate time. "Caught in the middle of a cannibal's lunch hour."

They continued to run for it... until all of a sudden a pile of dirt was dumped a few feet ahead of them. They screeched to a stop, and tried going another way. But a wheelbarrow cement mixer was dropped in their path, and they had to turn yet again. Lastly a bunch of girders were thrown down in disorganized stacks, and at that point they felt trapped. The only "safe" path now was the humongous dirt mountain behind them; but just as they were peering in that direction, Excavator appeared on top, blocking the sunlight.

"GOTCHA!"

She rocketed down and chomped over every single gasping appliance, scooping some dirt up too. With the subjects of interest in her bucket-mouth, Excavator raised her boom and made a sharp turn outside the construction site. From a bird's-eye view she could be seen rolling along at a turtle's pace with some of the pedestrians and traffic; but once out of peoples' watchful range, she spun her tracks and zoomed into the deeper, more developed part of the city at breakneck speed.


	11. High Gear

**"High Gear"**

* * *

><p>In an unknown dingy place, long ceiling lights were buzzing and flickering away, attracting a few flies. The light kept the interior of a large cement-walled warehouse lit, if however dimly. To the warehouse's far end stood a sturdy industrial door, but soon a pounding sound rang from behind it outside. Then came two more poundings, and the door was abruptly swung upward, by none other than Excavator. She tanked on inside, made a roundabout inside a maze of cardboard boxes, and stooped over to release the appliances that had had the misfortune of riding in her mouth with a bunch of dirt.<p>

As the five were sprawled out onto the cement floor, coughing, Lampy made an exclamation that echoed throughout the whole warehouse. "Ah, fresh air!"

"What a way to know what all the _dirt_ feels like," remarked Kirby, following up.

Radio teetered and tottered, trying to orient himself. "Good, I hope I'm not the only one who's about to send a message to the nearest wastebasket."

Excavator made a worried face before carrying on. "Well, uh, before you do that, let me be the first to welcome y'all to my office!" She presented the span of the warehouse in all its glory. "Take a gander around. Why, we got truckloads on truckloads o' cargo just waitin' to be shipped off!"

Just then a voice almost literally rang from behind the loud vehicle. "Afternoon there, Ex! How's work going?" It was a black telephone situated on the far wall.

Excavator turned partway. "Just swell, Tel!" she twittered. "Heh... kinda rolls off the tongue don't it?" She looked down at her mouth, which oddly contained no such tongue.

Tel giggled regardless. "You betcha."

And Excavator forced a chuckle, and turned back to the appliances. She instantly frowned and whispered to them. "Do _not_ bring up the benefits of home phone service or by golly she will go on motor-mouthing."

Toaster spat out dirt instead. "What'd you do with Air Conditioner?!" he demanded.

"Y-yeah!" Lampy also wanted to know.

Excavator popped her eyes open. "...Hm? What'd _Bulldozer_ do with Dusty? Well... he just took him to a repair shop. No harm against that eh?" She put on a silly grin.

Lampy stared down at the floor, thinking. "I guess not."

No thinking was needed for Kirby, however. "WHAT?" The vacuum cleaner rolled out in front without delay. "He's not broken! _I'M_ the one who needs repairs!"

"OH, my apologies," replied the excavator in a pseudo-courteous fashion. "By the looks of it all o' you could do with a _lil'_ spit-n'-polish... but nothin' personal. _Am I right?!_"

Hearing the resulting echo, Lampy silently peered around at his friends, who were each streaked with dirty dirt. "Yep," he said. "Sounds pretty legit."

"_Ooo_," Excavator squealed, "and so 'bright' too!" She shot up her head in a jiffy. "All right, that's it. We need to get ya to the shop _stat_! Asap! Pronto!"

Zooming backward from the clueless appliances, she moved toward her trusty telephone, about to make a phone call – when she stopped midway.

"...Oh-hoo," she remembered, "I am forgettin' my manners aren't I. Heh-eh-em. Your permission. Please."

The excavator was now ever-patiently awaiting a response. Toaster took a look at Lampy, Kirby, Radio, and Blanky. The four didn't appear so exuberant over whatever their hostess had in mind.

Taking up on Excavator's request, Toaster decided for the rest of the group. "R-right, absolutely!" He stuck his lever forward with a determined expression. "Go for it."

With that, Excavator formed another smile. "'Atta toaster!" She then proceeded to lean in on the tiny receiver as Tel finished dialing and held it for her. While the phone was ringing, the appliances found themselves becoming very curious indeed. After a moment or two, someone on the other end picked up. What luck.

"Hello?" the construction vehicle spoke. "Yes, this is Barbara L. Flegenheimer, warehouse manager."

She gave a sly bouncing of the brows to Toaster and friends, who were now more than discombobulated.

"Matty... I noticed you were out en route and not on break! Wouldjoo be a doll and make a quick turnaround for me? It would _seem_ as though you left a few appliances back here."

High-pitched chattering sounds came from the other end.

"It'll only take a flick o' the wrist! Just pack 'em up and truck 'em off like you daily do!"

The chattering grew more annoying to the ear.

"No, my driver's card _was_ up-to-dated, thank you kindly. Whatchoo doin' with it anyhow?!" Excavator was beginning to lose her temper.

More chattering came, this time with better composure.

Excavator let her jaw slack briefly. "...You found it? The whole dang wallet?!" She shut her eyes in a fluster. "_Wha-gee_... agh, just drop it by my house." Yet more chattering came through. "Not the warehouse, MY house! _MY house!_ You got the address!"

The chattering sounded slower and more suspicious.

"The reason?" Excavator had a split-second look-see at her electronic guests. "The REASON is I gotta hightail it back there now 'cause I realized I got my electric bill that still needs payin' off – "

The chattering became much lower-pitched.

"Well technical speak it ain't past due yet, but thanks for yer concerns," finalized Excavator. "Thanks. ...I said THANK YOU! Have a nice day Matty Cake."

And so she hung up, right then and there (with Tel of course doing the hanging).

The appliances were standing low on the floor in shock, statuesque as little prairie dogs. Heeding their stillness, the excavator drew away from the phone and clenched her jaws, conceiving of a way to calm herself and explain what in the name of hoopla just went on.

"Sss... yup, never know what kind o' funny things you'll hear next," was her reflecting statement.

Remarkably, Blanky brought himself to ask her a serious question. "Y-you can talk? To a _master_?"

"Got that right Yellowey!" Excavator immediately exclaimed. "Any master matter o' factly, anywhere from the Great White North to Timbuktu!"

"Wow..." thought Lampy aloud, "what's it like?"

Kirby couldn't believe the lamp's dimness. "Didn't ya listen to her? Certainly doesn't sound like a rip-roaring good time to me."

"Ah, well that was one measly phone call," Ex explained. "I mean, sure it can be a pain in the BOOM comin' to terms with these people... but everything ends up working out and... I move on!" She thought nothing else of it as she strode in another direction, past the appliances.

The appliances, still awed as they were by the notion of communicating with people, followed her at each his own pace. "Huh," Toaster voiced. "By the way... if you don't mind me asking... um, where's _your_ master at?"

The question caused the unsightly excavator to turn her boom back in a flinch. "Beg your pardon?"

"Yeah," wondered Radio, "seems kinda unusual of us to grace such..." he looked around at the boxed mess, "'humble' quarters with no master of the house. Doesn't it?"

Excavator shut her eyes and shook her head furiously. "Whoa whoa whoa! Who said anything about havin' to have a master?" She then stopped to think, and next put her thinking to action. "Here, let me show ya a lil' somethin'..."

Stretching her boom around and opening the door of her control station (whose window had been heavily cracked), Excavator reached inside with her jaws, pulling out what looked like... a Hollywood celebrity cardboard cutout. In the control station, it had looked like an actual person.

Kirby was almost aghast. "What, dare I ask, is THAT."

"Oh," Excavator casually muffled, "just a 'prop' I use to keep my construct job... without anyone else havin' to do nothin', ha!"

Radio watched as the cardboard cutout was put away again. "Uhh, looks cute as a baby's behind."

Paying no attention to that insight, Excavator smacked her jaws. "But, enough about big old me!" she finished. "What're all _your _occupations, hmm?"

The appliances were caught off guard. Toaster quickly glanced at the others. "Oh, uhhh..."

After a round of tentative stalling, Lampy finally hopped forward to answer for himself. "...Well, I can shine my light on... well, anything that needs shining!" he informed.

"Stop right there!" shouted Excavator, startling the lamp in the process. "Now, heh, truth be told, that ain't how things work in these parts Gizmo." She then rolled off toward a tall stack of boxes. "See if you so much as _wanna_ make a difference with those masters, you gotta take on their roles – ya gotta _PUSH_ the boundaries of business." And with that she pushed all the boxes over. The result was a loud crash offscreen. "'Cause you know you can do more than, toast toast or, play show tunes or... make things easier to _see_. Ha-ha."

Blanky thought about what was said for a moment, before lifting his head with an idea. "Oh, like cleaning up the house?"

"Hrmph," Kirby grunted, unmoved. "One thing _I'd_ like to know is, how would working even harder help US?"

Excavator was happy to hear this. "Good question!"

_Somehow, every ceiling light went off, and a projector screen descended from above. A flash of light beamed through the dark onto the screen, starting up an old black-and-white instructional video for the appliances to watch._

_5... 4... 3... 2 _–

_The title of the video read: "Proving Your Worth in a World of Progress."_

_The music cued up, and a cozy office appeared. Somehow, Lampy of all appliances was plunked in the office chair, and he looked around, puzzled as to how and why he got in this picture without any color. Stacks of papers popped on the desk out of thin air, and Lampy watched the stacks become so tall that they fell over on top of him, burying him in a papery heap. He then emerged from the heap and stared down, overwhelmed by the sea of paperwork._

_Suddenly Excavator burst through the east wall of the office. She graciously bestowed him a paper stamper that she held in her giant mouth. She also winked at the unseen audience, and a thumbsup appeared in the lower righthand corner._

_The video switched to a scene of Excavator driving up a rolling hill carrying lumber, looking perfectly clean – no mud splotches, no cracked windows, no nothing. Below she saw some workmen without any faces picking up trash with their poking sticks. They seemed tired and sweaty in the hot sun, so Excavator dropped her lumber and gladly rode down, scooping up the scattered trash for them, after which she threw the litter into a nearby dumpster. The workmen gathered around her and cheered, and one of them patted her bucket. She then looked at Toaster, who was standing in the distance by his lonesome. The toaster had no clue what he was doing there, but a single glance behind himself showed him a countryside, wherein houses and roads gradually started budding into existence, instead of trees or flowers._

_Rows upon rows of girders were pieced together higher and higher until they formed the tower of a building. Excavator stood on top, tiny as an ant, but she knocked over a can of paint that, as it plummeted, splashed the whole tower with paint, forming very well-enforced walls and windows._

_The paint can landed on an unmindful Radio, who got trapped underneath. He used his antenna to prop the can over himself, but what _he_ saw stunned him. Endless halls of cubicles. Excavator lifted him up on her bucket so he could get a better view, but the observance of so many faceless, pencil-pushing employees quite frankly scared him to death. Off of Excavator he leaped, and away he ran to where Kirby and Blanky were standing, on a gray carpeted floor._

_But then, Radio quickly noticed a slew of crumbs on the carpet, and directed Kirby to them sans hesitation. Just as Kirby drove forth to clean, he was stuck on a swiveling chair and rotated to a courtroom, where he was appointed as the judge, a gavel in his cord's grip and all. This confused him greatly, being in such a powerful position. The jury was full of no-faces, and Excavator sat next to him as the law clerk, wearing giant glasses. By impulse, the vacuum cleaner swung the gavel, and the impact created a flat street. Blanky was promptly seen crawling across it with a hat and a bagful of newspapers. He panted once before tossing a newspaper roll at the doorstep of a house, where the door opened and Toaster waddled out. An apron, oven mitts, and a hot pie appeared on Toaster before he picked up the paper (with difficulty) and read it. It said in big bold letters: "Job Listings."_

_Lampy immediately poked his head out the door and took the paper from Toaster. Inside the house, the lamp intensely skimmed through the job listings, and then he beamed for joy. He gave the paper a grateful smooch and hastily made a phone call using Tel the telephone. After some silent chit-chat the video switched to a scene where a faceless technician was assembling car parts at an auto-manufacturing plant. The man was whisked away from his work and replaced with Lampy, who got excited that he could actually build something. Right then, Excavator crashed onto the car that Lampy would've helped make and smiled at him innocently, singing along to the music as if nothing happened._

_A translucent profit graph enlarged on the black-and-white video screen, climbing and climbing as the background faded from a lush forest to a developed city, laced with highways and monstrous industries. Surely this mega-transformation meant progress._

_Once the profit line met an exceptionally huge dollar sign, the video film withered to a blank. And once it had withered, Excavator saw the headlights of a delivery truck passing by the windows. The timing couldn't have been better. She nudged the five appliances to the warehouse's open back door and left them there to inanimate themselves as a deliveryman approached. He packed each of them into separate boxes and lifted them into the back of his mysterious big truck. After shutting the truck's door, the man got behind the wheel again and drove off with the haul of goods, straight down a foggy street. Excavator watched from behind, ending her encouraging song in a final note. But shortly thereafter, she grinned, _maliciously_, and retreated into her corner of the city fog, seeming pretty pleased with herself as she disappeared._


	12. Appliance Recycling, Inc

**Appliance ****Recycling, Inc.**

* * *

><p>In a separate, less foggy zone of the city, busy pedestrians walked past a streetside café on a corner. The café wouldn't have been singled out among all the other shops had it not been the favorite hangout venue for two certain masters and a mistress. Inside, drinking their beverages, Jay and Chris were listening to Rob as he retrospected on the events that had taken place about three days prior.<p>

"Man, what am I going to do." Rob was seen slamming his cup of coffee down on a table as Jay and Chris watched. "Everything just vanished into thin air... just like that! It's unthinkable!" Most likely having done plenty of pacing around, Rob finally sat down opposite his friends at their windowside booth. "How could they get lost so fast?"

His finger on his lip, Jay offered a rather farfetched proposition. "Maybe it's an omen from above. Maybe it's telling you to stop focusing on the past and embrace the future instead!"

"Whoa, nicely put Jay," Chris remarked next to him. "You should be some sorta poet." She proceeded to sip on her latte.

Rob gave her a questioning look. "Chris? Don't you understand how much those old appliances matter to me?"

"I sure do."

"Then aren't you gonna help me find them?"

Chris then twiddled with her hair and stared somewhere else, a little reluctantly. "Well, I _would _right now if I didn't have so much college algebra I needed to do."

To that Rob next turned to Jay. "...Jay, will you help me out?"

"Can't – I've still gotta pack for my trip to Bernalillo."

Rob narrowed his bespectacled eyes. "Wwwait. That trip was scheduled for yesterday, wasn't it? ...Did you _forget_?"

Jay suddenly widened his eyes and moved them around. "Oh, umm, I had some major sporting events goin' on, sooo, it got, postponed. Heh," he finished, smiling.

"More like events as seen on _TV_," Chris made clear under her breath.

After hearing this information, Rob couldn't conceal his agitation any longer. He stood straight up from his seat and raised his voice. "Wha – are you kidding me?! W-well if that's how it is, cantcha make a _little_ time? Every minute counts! My appliances could be halfway to San Diego for all I know!"

Chris peered up at her crazed boyfriend. "Um, Rob, your glasses." She pointed at her nose bridge.

Once he'd realized his glasses were beginning to fall off, Rob jabbed them back into place and sighed, sitting down once again. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "It's just the thought of someone taking my things and running off with 'em, and then the cottage, which isn't even _standing_ anymore..." He pressed his fist against his cheek, elbow on the table. "All of it."

Chris raised her arm and began to gently rub his back. A moment of quiescence gave her the opportunity to figure things out. "Well hey, don't sweat it; all you gotta do is see if that repair center you were gonna go to can organize some kinda search to get your stuff back."

Rob slowly lifted his head. "Say, you might be onto something there."

"_But_ it'll have to wait 'til later before you can borrow my car," she noted strongly.

"And then wreck it by smashing it into a streetlight like you did!" Jay added, not even attempting to constrain his laughter.

"What?!" shouted Rob. "That was ONE time! And it didn't even scratch the paint!"

In a single reaction Jay curled up his entire body. "It was a joke – _it was a joke!_ My bad." He internally prayed not to have a cup of hot coffee thrown his way.

* * *

><p>The delivery truck which contained the boxes of appliances drove steadily along a strip of asphalt, and it passed the city limits as it headed up to a gradually darkening and hazy-brown environment. The destination: a colossal factory, with sky-reaching pipes spewing out exhaust and industrial waste pouring into the river. The truck crossed the river's bridge of steel, distancing more and more from view.<p>

* * *

><p>Inside the factory's equally gigantic interior, workers were moving stacks of boxes back and forth, sorting them out upon endless rows of counters. Some of them were even seen directing a hulking yellow bulldozer out safely through an open industrial door so they could resume their other tasks.<p>

On one counter, a worker brought up five boxes of varying shapes and sizes, opened each of them to check their contents, and finally handed them off one at a time to another worker. That worker then turned each box upside down to dump the contents onto a sleek and fully running conveyor belt. These contents of course consisted of a toaster, a lamp, a radio, a vacuum cleaner, and an electric blanket.

After being carried a ways and entering a dark, elongated cubical tunnel, the appliances sprang to life. Wanting to ascertain what this strange facility had in store, they carefully arose and crept to the air vents on their left. The sight through the vents needed no voiced exposition.

A complex hovering machine was assembling parts. Many variant ones. It attached caps, doors, plates, and rivets. It implemented filters, trays, handles, and knobs. One by one, the same exact appliance was spruced up and shifted down the line so the next could arrive. All of them were destined for one job and one job only: microwaving.

The machine produced relentless whirring and flying sparks from its tasking shafts, making Blanky cover his eyes in fear.

Suddenly the air vents the appliances were peeking through turned into a black wall, and they backed away, discouraged. However, the next row of air vents approached them from the _right_ side of the corridor, and they immediately moved across the conveyor belt to look. This side revealed a much darker room, housing a giant tub of luminescent orange acid. Workmen lined up to dump objects of plastic and other cheap materials into the tub, where they met their fate and melted into a liquid.

Toaster and Lampy both reacted with wincing expressions, but only Lampy stuck out his tongue to demonstrate his utter displeasure.

Eventually, the quintet exited the corridor and entered a lit, but very open-ended area. They looked up at the ceiling; it had been built to dizzying heights. A massive array of metal parts swept far over their heads via suspension chain, and large gears and pistons were toiling away, pumping out loads of hissing steam from either side.

Before they could even begin to make heads or tails of such contraptions, the appliances entered another corridor, this time filled to the brim with darkness. They eventually emerged from the other end, able to see, and all the more confounded by the seemingly endless expanse of the factory's interior, layered with many more conveyor belt trafficways and completed with red walls, an overarching monster of an iron industrial machine, and a near-bottomless pit. Mechanical noise reverberated without end. Not exactly the tiny, cozy repair shop the appliances had first imagined.

Kirby managed to articulate his thoughts gathered from his eyes. "I think I've about seen enough of this place."

"You and me both," agreed a wide-eyed Toaster.

"I don't like it here," Blanky said softly.

"Me neither!" Lampy concurred. At that moment, he stared off somewhere. He gasped. "LOOK!"

The other fours' eyes followed his pointed "snout" down and farther ahead, to a particular conveyor belt off a little to the right. There, being carried along, was a children's red wagon and one lone air conditioning unit.

Radio expressed his urgent excitement. "Why if it isn't Jack Frost in the form of a cube!"

"What's goin' on down there?" Lampy asked, probably wanting more than just one answer.

"...Uh-oh," Toaster mumbled. "Look over _there_." He stuck out his lever.

They all saw what lay at that conveyor belt's end. It was a churning metal grinder. Air Conditioner had been preoccupied, staring down at nothing with nil to think about; when he took a look at the wagon yards in front of him, he watched as it got painfully, excruciatingly crunched underneath the rolling deathtrap. After briefly widening his eyes, he could only narrow them and look away. It was scrap metal time.

Back aloft, Lampy fretted around, unable to hold himself together. "W-well whaddo we do? We can't reach him; i-it's physically implausible!"

Radio, undespairing as he was, was thinking quite the contrary. "...Not unless I give it a solid go for myself." He lumbered past his pals toward the conveyor belt's edge. "Step aside." And then he prepared to make a jump.

"No _don't!_" Toaster furiously yanked him back before he could do so.

Now on edge and filled with worry, the appliances peered down, minds whiting out. How could they possibly save that air conditioner?

Gaping a little, Blanky was the only one whose mind was racing; and it came to a standstill when he hit upon an idea. He closed his mouth and then slowly looked over. "Radio?"

"What."

"I-I can try to float you down there... safely and securely... if you let me."

"No-no, it's... I..." Radio turned to the blanket in befuddlement. "You sure?"

"Uh-huh." Blanky nodded determinedly.

Radio gave some thought before speaking, for once. "...It'll be dangerous."

"I don't care."

Somehow inspired by those three words, the radio hastily swept up his blanket friend. "Then suppose I turn you into one o' those things: a fluffy yellow makeshift paraglider!"

He began tying part of Blanky around his antenna and the other around his cord.

"Ah, the thrill of a household appliance's first flight!"

Kirby got the familiar bad feeling that these guys were about to pull some kind of moronic stunt. "You two're SERIOUS?" he practically yelped.

"We won't be long," Radio secured. "Give my regards to the wife and kids back home." So with Blanky attached to both his "arms," he leaped and spread out his yellow paraglider before Toaster could stop him again.

"Away!" He floated on down, flaring with heroism, to the conveyor belt of the one called Air Conditioner. He landed just meters short of the big unit, but he and Blanky came to "Dusty's" aid in a bolt.

Air Conditioner suddenly glanced to the left. "What the – " He noticed Radio and Blanky joining him, from where he couldn't imagine.

The two lined up next to him. "Sit tight my goosebump-yielding shut-in!" instructed Radio. "We're gonna get you out in the pop of a gun here." He and Blanky started to push the unit to the right with all their might.

"Hold on! Just a little farther!" Blanky grunted.

Alarms rang in Air Conditioner's chrome; he was about to be pushed off the belt! "Have you guys completely lost it?! It's a hundred-foot fall!"

Radio kept pushing, with a twist and a turn. "Yeah... better that than getting munched to smithereens in the jaws of a hellbeast!"

Air Conditioner was leaning over the belt's edge. "No stop," he urged. "_PULL BACK_ – "

Before he could finish his demands he slipped off, along with Radio and Blanky. The three went plummeting to their doom. Almost a flash later, however, they found themselves crash-landing in a rising dumpster cart. This managed to dissolve their terror.

While Toaster and Kirby looked on from above in temporary relief, Lampy only shot one glance over before trying to bring their attention to where _their_ conveyor belt was taking them. "Uhh, fellas?" he spoke. "We're not out of the woods."

They weren't even in any natural environment. Toaster and Kirby stared where Lampy was staring, straight into the maw of an industrial machine. Inside the conveyor belt dropped into a trench of horrible grinding gears.

Terrified, Toaster nonetheless cut his deer-in-headlights gaze and glanced one way, then the other. Shouldering the churning trench were two safe walkways, and the appliances stood not too far between them. By sheer predisposition Toaster pointed his lever to the right walkway and jumped in its direction. Immediately following the observance of this act Kirby jumped to the left, if only to do things differently.

Now Lampy was the only appliance who had yet to escape an impending scrapping, and at first he couldn't decide which direction to go: Toaster's or Kirby's. But one last-second peek over the trench and he was catapulting himself over to the left.

Through the right walkway Toaster ran, finding himself ducking under overbearing crankshafts as he went. He panted and finally managed to make it to the end of the sector. Kirby in the meantime had to pull his vacuum pole straight down as he rushed underneath the likes of his own crankshaft buddies. Lampy tried his best to keep up with the vacuum by hopping beyond maximum capacity.

A crankshaft cranked down and struck the lamp in the back of the head.

"_Aah!_"

His bulb was knocked out, and he fell flat on the floor. He watched as his most prized possession rolled off toward the walkway's very edge. He also noticed that Kirby was trucking from him – farther and farther away.

"Kirby!" he screamed. "_HELP!_"

Kirby caught ear of Lampy's distress call, and he turned around, preparing to go back. But a crankshaft whooshed in front of him, much too close for his liking. He made a short reflexive jitter, tentatively turned the other way, and somehow went on, abandoning Lampy.

But Toaster had also heard the cry of the lamp, and he had turned only to see that Kirby wasn't doing anything about it. So from the safety of his walkway he judged the width of the trench and ran forth, making such a grand jump that he appeared as though he were a flying Supertoaster. He tumbled onto the other walkway and staggered quickly along, over to the hapless Lampy. On his way he saved the precious lightbulb from a potential fall and rushed to help Lampy up; then he carefully screwed the bulb into Lampy's shade for him.

As Toaster next rushed off, Lampy started obsessive-compulsively screwing his bulb in tighter.

"Come on!" Toaster yelled.

Lampy made an impulsive-reactionary squeal before he dashed on after him.

The two soon met up with a seemingly paralyzed Kirby at both the walkway's and trench's end. Individually they scoped their dangerous surroundings in silence, wondering where to go, and preferably where to survive. No more than five seconds ticked by before Lampy caught eye of one more giant crankshaft that was descending upon them. With nowhere else to flee, he shoved Kirby, Toaster, and himself off the walkway, where they landed and disappeared into a mobile dumpster cart filled with shredded junk. Just as what happened to the other three appliances...

* * *

><p>Now trapped in what seemed to be a dark, tremorous metal jungle, Blanky moled through a smorgasbord of trash, searching for his ham of a friend.<p>

"Radio. Radio! Where are you?"

Where the radio was, he at first could not for the life of him explain. "Not one clue," said he. "Wait, stop the press, I'm kinda stuck between a flat tire and someone with very bad refrigerator breath."

A slightly irritated Air Conditioner emerged next to Radio. "Yeah that'd be me, thanks."

Comforted by the fact that the other two appliances were alive and well, Blanky went ahead and asked a question. "So where are we going? It feels like we're moving someplace."

At that moment the three felt the dumpster cart lurch to a stop. They listened as the sound of an opening door echoed from beneath them, and they plunged down along with copious amounts of trash. They were swept along atop the garbage toward a reddish opening, but their attention fell upon a safety platform to the left striped with black and yellow outside thereof. Mechanical instinct compelled them to make a hop to that platform. Radio and Blanky helped shove Air Conditioner onto it; it was good what they did, because just then, behind them drew the big plate of a compressor, shortening the garbage disposal shaft and bunching up all the trash. The three flipped around just in time to watch the trash get cleared off the shaft ledge and fall down down down, deep into a pit of burning acid. From there every trash bit submitted to the intense chemicals and melted.

To the opposite side Radio, Blanky, and Air Conditioner heard another door draw open, and they turned one-hundred-eighty degrees to another shaft's mouth only meters lower from where they stood. The clattering of more garbage followed, but then Toaster, Lampy, and Kirby were seen being knocked to the shaft's edge in a heap. They were lying there, disoriented and completely helpless.

In an instant Radio blasted: "THEY'RE GONNA BE MELTED DOWN LIKE HEATED BUTTER!"

The compressor in that shaft whirred and began to shift forward.

Air Conditioner couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't take the thought of that toaster, lamp, and even vacuum prematurely meeting their master's maker, nor could he take any more emotional, guilt-ridden pain. So he gathered all the strength he could muster, propped himself up on the railing of the safety platform, and, by the defiance of gravity, hurdled himself off. Radio and Blanky watched, and froze.

He landed behind the three and slammed his side into the compressor.

_CRASH!_

Toaster and Lampy were shaken to their senses, and they glanced back right then and there, awestruck as the old air conditioner held this proverbial hellish pitchfork at bay.

They picked themselves up and moved to where they could eye the acid pit they would've sunk under at that second.

Radio and Blanky lept down, speechless though they were; and together they pulled Kirby to his normal upright position.

Kirby had yet to recover his balance, much more his mind. "What kinda factory – "

"Nevermind!" interrupted Toaster. "_Look!_"

He pointed Kirby to the direction of Air Conditioner, who was struggling to hold the compressor back.

"_MOVE_ guys!" Toaster pushed Lampy, Radio, and Blanky out of harm's way while Kirby stared blankly. The vacuum cleaner jolted all of a sudden and rushed to Air Conditioner's aid, slamming backward into the compressor as it started inching forward.

The other four appliances managed to slip through, and collect themselves, behind the compressor's big square plate. Lampy and Toaster took a brief period of time to inspect the quaking, overworked compressor piston – strapped with wire – that served as the driving force to the garbage disposal system.

Lampy gave an educated-for-once opinion. "This's gotta be the sturdiest hydraulic mechanism I've ever studied!"

"But how do we shut it down?!" demanded Toaster.

Wheels spun in the lamp's small chrome. "...Fluid pressure engaged," he thought aloud, prongs to his mouth, "calibrated spark plugs, motor-estimation algorithm for sites A, B, C..." His befogged memorizations were all he could utilize on the spot.

"C'mon, c'mon, give us somethin' to work with!" Radio impatiently pressured.

This must have lit Lampy's idea lightbulb, for then he exclaimed: "..._Ah_, I got it! Pull out all the wires!"

At that command the four clotted at the piston and gave the wires a whole lot of tugging.

Kirby and Air Conditioner in the meantime were beginning to lose floor; they neared ever closer to the edge of the shaft. The compressor plate was winning out.

But Toaster yanked the wires with all his amp power; Blanky tried to do the same; and although Radio got himself uselessly tangled, Lampy pulled with his very gritted teeth. In one desperate interval, they at last heard the piston whir and shut down, wires loose all over the place.

As he and Kirby tipped to the edge, Air Conditioner suddenly felt the motive force of the compressor stop dead, and the sweat of his labor dropped from hot to cold.

Kirby, however, noticed nothing and persisted in pushing against the compressor plate, until he situated one of his wheels onto a lone piece of trash – a crushed soda can. Before he knew it his wheel slipped on the can and sent him bumping straight off the shaft ledge.

Air Conditioner saw this, flipped, and grabbed Kirby's trailing cord in his teeth. In a second the cord twang in place, and Kirby found himself facing the deep pit from above. He was suspended in vast space... swinging to and fro faintly.

Just then Toaster, Lampy, Radio, and Blanky hurried out around the compressor plate to help Air Conditioner push it into the shaft from whence it came. As they heaved, he inched backward, lifting Kirby at a slow and cautious pace up to the ledge. Once the vacuum cleaner was brought up and on his two wheels again – with the deactivated compressor buried away – Radio discovered a ventilation door in the shaft and subsequently started unscrewing its bolts. He opened it, stepped aside, and let it clang to the floor.

"Every exit is an entrance somewhere else!" he proclaimed as he scuttled into the ventilation shaft. His "meager" companions followed, and Air Conditioner was skidded inside by Toaster and Kirby.

Not too long after the appliances' narrow escape from a bleak fate, more junk was dumped into the compressor's shaft, courtesy of an opening door. More and more junk kept piling, however, causing pressure to build in the chain-linked disposal system. Racked whirring and beeping sounded off, and steam began bursting from pipes.


	13. Appliances on Wheels

**Appliances on Wheels **

* * *

><p>The proud Radio kept running through the ventilation shaft ahead of the rest of the gang, ceasing not for one measly breath. Despite the clashing of steam and smoke that thickened up the air as if in a battlezone, there was no stopping this valiant machine. However, while Radio was preoccupied with his navigational hubris, the other appliances were losing him as they trailed behind. In time they couldn't see hide nor hair of him; he had just faded into obscurity.<p>

Toaster tried swatting the smoke away, accomplishing little. "Radio!" he coughed. He peeked from the shelter of his upraised lever and turned to Lampy, who had his light on to get a view, any view. "Lampy, can you see anything?!"

Lampy coughed too. "I can't even see within a one-inch radius!" he exclaimed alarmingly.

Air Conditioner was crawling, barely following the duo; and he had his eyes stubbornly shut. "The fan system's shot, otherwise we wouldn't be havin' this – " he couldn't finish before wheezing and coughing, much worse than Toaster and Lampy had combined.

"_You_ sure don't sound good," Toaster told him. Out of concern, not derision.

"We must be livin' a health-hazard infomercial, " Lampy determined. But as he pivoted his head he suddenly glimpsed over Air Conditioner to find nobody else marching over there in the far backdrop, not even in silhouette form.

"...Hey!" he shrieked. "Blanky and Kirby're GONE!"

Toaster turned around immediately; he wanted to suppress his physical shock, but couldn't.

* * *

><p>The missing blanket and vacuum cleaner had accidentally taken a wrong path and were lost as all could be. Blanky held on and shook upon Kirby's head as Kirby kept his vacuum pole lowered, so as not to scrape the top of the shaft he was barreling through. He found himself having to skid his wheels to a stop as he approached a "fork in the road" – two diverging shaft tunnels, and no way to tell what led where.<p>

Wide-open-eyed, even amid the smoke, Kirby panted and coughed frantically. "Which way'd everyone else run off to?!" he bellowed, in an attempt to display anger instead of some other emotion.

"I don't know!" came the answer.

"That ain't helping, Blanket!" Kirby narrowed his attention down one shaft as opposed to the other.

"Maybe they're already outside..." Blanky speculated, "and we need to go _this_ way!" He pointed his wool in the direction of the more ominous shaft.

That wasn't the one Kirby was studying. He switched to it hesitantly. He wanted to cancel it out of his mind. "Nah, that way's too dark!" he protested; but then he squinted his eyes. "Wait..."

The vacuum could slightly make out from that shaft the moving silhouettes of what appeared to be... two appliances. Appliances who were creeping toward him, hazed by the smoke. He could only tell that one was tall and sported a bulb-shaped head, while the other was stouter and had a "beak" of some type.

"Who's there?!" Kirby barked in self-defense.

The mystery appliances stopped and glanced at each other for a moment. Then they glanced back at Kirby.

"Come with us!" the stout one whispered urgently. "...And try not to blow a fuse."

* * *

><p>Deeper into the ventilation maze, the cubical walls enclosed darker shadows, and the smoke was heavier here than anywhere else. This spelled trouble for one expert navigator, who against all odds refused to desist his charge into unknowable territory.<p>

Radio still thought his friends were following the trail he'd been blazing, and blazing quickly. "All right," he spoke, through a marginally muffled speaker, "my tube's tellin' me to head northbound through this here smokescreen. Anyone second that? We can always retrace our steps!"

There came no reply, beyond the warped hiss of steam.

Oblivious to reality, Radio continued waddling forth and trusted that his friends were anything but absent. "Ha-ha-ha, you've all been hobnobbing too much with the air conditioners. Cold shoulders aren't in my dialect ya see."

Then he contorted himself a little to look back at who was traveling behind him. But there was neither no one nor no thing.

He stopped in his tracks and fully flip-flopped to the backward direction. "Wha... what, happened. Toaster!" he called out of habit. "Can you hear me? Can... can you see me? From anywhere in this... labyrinth of, monotony?"

Of course Toaster couldn't see him. Radio backed up slowly, and, in a sudden moment, he fled blindly into a random shaft around the corner. He had to stop however, for the smoke there was much too dense.

"No, no I can't... this isn't the right way; it can't be."

The radio made a loop-de-loop out of that shaft and clattered down another one. He saw not but more smoke and darkness.

"The vacuum, the lamp, the blanket... they've gotta be, somewhere. WHERE?"

He ran further, stopped, turned 'round, and ran in and out of shaft after shaft, increasing his speed and his panic.

"Don't worry chums! I'll find you! You're not lost, just misplaced! I..."

Realizing _he_ was lost, the small red radio halted and shrank his antenna. And just... shuddered.

"I'm having trouble here..." he said flatly. "I could use some intel," rose his voice. "_I need intel!_"

In a self-destructing response he started running into the shafts' _walls_ instead, losing hope – losing his mind.

"I'll shine shoes!" He slammed once.

"I'll do community service!" He slammed a second time.

"I'll wear a giant chicken costume!" He took a final blow to the chrome before the resulting daze left his balance faltering.

"Please, please no!" he bleated, resigned to his pitiful state.

All was chaos. But as the radio tried to run instinctively onward, feeling no more transcendent purpose in doing so, he, in an instant, crashed into another appliance. A mysterious appliance.

"_OOF!_" echoed two unified grunts.

Radio found himself sprawled on the cold metal floor, and his rationality seemed to have been knocked right back into him. For a while he was only moving his antenna to pick up on the distant mechanistic noise cranking in his consciousness; the rest of him felt like static.

A cassette wired with film stretched out to him. "Hello," greeted a timid voice. "Want some help?"

Radio arose halfway and rubbed his chrome with his antenna of hearing. "Yes. I do."

When he took hold of the cassette and was lifted up onto his pegs, he brushed himself off and then took a gander at his helper straight on. In surprise he jerked and leapt away, for there in his midst sat a red tape deck, a "cousin" appliance by function.

"Whoa!" exclaimed Radio within his leap. "Uh, you're quite the familiar face aren't you." He edged a few careful steps closer to inspect this suspicious fellow.

"Yeah-heah," the cassette player began, "I'm the tape recorder from the, heh, 'Ye Olde CB Country Station.' Surprised huh?" He smiled with his button teeth and lowered a friendly brow.

"I think so," admitted Radio matter-of-factly. "But how'd you manage to scout me out with all this smoke flyin' around?" He swept his antenna to evoke awareness of the hazy environment.

"It wasn't easy," Tape Recorder answered, averting his eyes at the floor momentarily. "But as for you, you're probably better off asking how I found this whole factory to start with!" In a playful manner, he winked and gently nudged the radio.

Radio was first caught off guard by this play, but he reverted to asking questions, in haste. "Oh... r-right. Then how was _that_ done?"

Tape Recorder got unhitched in the realization that he didn't want to say what he'd just said; he showed hesitation in his face before offering his explanation. In regret he sighed. "Here." As if to avoid any antipathy he inched around Radio, toward Radio's back, and opened up his battery compartment, making him lurch. After some clinking about, the tape deck pulled out a small device that blipped a red light. He showed it to Radio, who drew away from it upon viewing.

"GPS technology," Tape Recorder explained, handing the device over. "State-of-the-art! My, um, 'friends' Pops and Wattson found the equipment in an FBI truck way back when."

Radio gazed down in isolated thought at this tiny chip in his antenna; what those strange appliances had been doing in their past times, he did not want to know. And what were they tracking him for?

Tape Recorder returned to focusing on his duties. "Oh, which reminds me..." He suddenly turned around, stuck a cassette in his mouth, and whistled piercingly loud down the ventilation shafts.

In a mere two seconds a faint wind-buzzing was heard, traveling forthward from the smoky depths. It hovered, ever nearer, until finally, out of the smoke and into view, there flew a true blue desktop fan.

"Did somebody _whistle_?!" Fan yelled in midair, imagining "fan" fare in that sky-high chrome of hers.

"Uh-huh," Tape Recorder replied, "and we have a lost radio on our plugs! Could you lift us back out of here?"

Fan glanced behind herself unsuredly. "If I can find the exit." She flip-stared back down at Radio and Tape Recorder, all bug-eyed. "...Which shouldn't be hard in the least!" she shouted alongside tapering laughter. "No-no-no-_no_!" She shut her eyes and shook her head.

Radio watched her instantly lower her cord between himself and his scout of a tape player.

"Here, grab on!" commanded the fan offscreen.

And that's just what Radio and Tape Recorder did. Once they'd gotten a firm grasp of the dangling cord, Fan lifted them up with a restrained effort.

"Whoa-oh – whoa!" shouted Radio, apparently not in "an appliance's first flight" mood.

Creaking her head down to the radio, then back up to its straightforward position, Fan squinted her eyes in determination and strengthened the spin of her whirling blades. She revved and pulled the two passengers through a wall of smoke and an enlarged ventilation shaft, to safety.

"E-easy!" Radio's voice ebbed. "Easy."

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, one could hear the panting of an air conditioner, a toaster, and a lamp as their silhouettes swam through the smoke of their own dealing. As Air Conditioner stalled for rest and coughed perpetually, Lampy hopped beside him in full color, his eyes squinted and his light still on.<p>

"I'm seein' something," Lampy began in a soft tone. "Somethin' very..." he paused whilst staring.

"_Incongruous_."

"What," asked Toaster on the double. "Whaddyou see?"

Air Conditioner tried to open his smoke-filled eyes. "Inco-what?"

"LIGHT!" answered the lamp to Toaster's inquiry. "We're almost there!"

In disbelief, Toaster peered ahead, raising his lever over his head. "Can it be...?"

"It _COULD_ be another scrap trap," the air conditioner forewarned. Toaster and Lampy moved past Air Conditioner nonetheless, headed toward a square-shaped brownish hue. And instead of snarking up an attitude, Air Conditioner decided to follow them, via a slow but sure caterpillar crawl. The three eventually reached the bright opening, soon discovering one grand fact: they had found an exit from the smoggy ventilation maze of doom. It was glorious.

"Lampy, give us some more light!" urged Toaster. "We've gotta see if there's any way down."

The lamp pushed his bulb harder in its place to get some extra juice out of it – but no dice. "I'm tryin' Toaster," he spoke, cracking his voice more than ever. "Right now my bulb's at its breaking point!"

"Couldja lean over the edge a little?" offered the toaster as an alternative. Air Conditioner, making a face at what he perceived a risky imperative, figured it was high time he did something about this smoke fudging everyone's vision. Thus he opened his mouth quite wide and began deeply inhaling, so much so that he was sucking in the smoke. After intaking enough of the stuff he blew a tremendous arctic blast that swashed the remaining smoke out of the area. Now it was possible to find the safest way down this suspended shaft opening.

Toaster and Lampy, each on opposite sides of Air Conditioner, smiled in elation. Their smiles soon dropped, however, when unexpectedly, they heard a bolt pop from the thin shaft floor beneath them. It couldn't take Air Conditioner's massive weight. Another bolt popped, then yet another, until the floor broke through completely. Toaster and Lampy braced onto Air Conditioner's vented sides, and with a yell, they fell.

* * *

><p>At the bottom of the solid factory floor, a machine in the background could be seen carrying out production. Out of nowhere an appliance jumped into the foreground – a popcorn popper, by the name of Pops. She scanned the area carefully to ensure that all was clear, then she hopped out of sight. The lampshadeless lamp Wattson followed her in a similar hopping stride, and alongside him drove a certain Kirby and crawled a certain Blanky. Kirby was still absorbing his surroundings with an upward sweep of his gaze.<p>

Pops approached a raggedy gray canvas wedged inside piles of cardboard boxes and gas containers in front of a wall. The canvas seemed to be covering something very large. After a final three-hundred-sixty-degree lookaround, she hopped up on a box and hoisted part of the gray drapery, peeking underneath.

"Pssst!" she whispered. Wattson, Kirby, and Blanky encircled behind her.

Nothing happened at first, but it didn't take too long before an orange coffee pot sprang out from the canvas's shady underbelly.

"Go away!" Coffman spat at Pops.

Blanky, Kirby, and even Wattson's eyes turned round as bowling balls. Pops angled her head.

"Sour Grapes of Wrath," persisted Coffman, "don't you understand I'm as of right now a sitting duck?!"

With a mean-looking eyebrow jut Pops stared him down.

Only then did Coffman take a glance past her, realizing that Wattson had Kirby and Blanky with him. "...Oh," he uttered in astoundment. "You found Hoover and Blanket. Excellent."

He proceeded to duck under the canvas as he informed them: "It's your lucky day; we've got two vacant luxury seats."

With that statement he whipped off the tarp to reveal... a large four-wheeler motor cart. It sported the floor frame of a disassembled vehicle (only with additional wooden planks nailed across), a bare steering wheel, accelerator, brake, side railings, a familiar electric generator in the very back, a GPS system and satellite attached, and of course two front carseats, which were only missing their seat belts. Kirby and Blanky were awestruck to say the least.

"Well! Hop on acquaintances!" Coffman invited, motioning his fork-arm.

But suddenly there intercepted another event. Among a few lingering smoke streams spurting from a giant brown machine's vents, Fan flew out and above, carrying along Tape Recorder and Radio. Her blades jerked in split-second freezes as she made her descent to the five ground-bound appliances.

"Hey! HEY!" the attention-deficit fan hollered. "Look who we picked u-up!"

Coffman held his fork above his eye to the direction of that voice; Pops, Wattson, Blanky, and Kirby looked on too.

Right when Radio spied the blanket and vacuum below, joy seemed to have exploded from his cap. "It's THEM!" he roared. "_Fellas!_" Near the ground but not near enough, he addressed Fan above. "...Um, you can put me down now."

Fan smugly abided by the radio's request and tossed him on the floor, after which he somersaulted to his old friends and found himself standing in the very front of them. A moment's recollection, and he was gushing them his emotions two times over.

"Oh I'd never thought I'd see you again!" he trilled, as Fan and Tape Recorder landed behind him. "It was madness I tell ya, absolute _madness!_ Gimme a hug why dontcha!" He literally fell onto a bewildered and uncomfortable Kirby. Blanky, astonished at the outset, planted a joyous smile across his face and hugged the clock radio like he wanted.

"All aboard now!" Wattson told everyone out of forced courtesy. "No more dilly-dallying please."

Fan and Tape Recorder started climbing boxes to board the cart (like _Wattson_ wanted). In a tentative fashion, Kirby, Blanky and Radio broke apart and followed the two up. Wattson meanwhile stood on a standby box, mentally checkmarking each appliance as they boarded.

"So we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven..." he counted, jabbing his plug. "Eight..." he pointed to himself. A fact suddenly dawned on him, and he widened his eyes and jumped on the cart with everybody else.

"We're three short!" he relayed to Tape Recorder and Pops.

Tape Recorder got anxious. "I thought we checked every nook and cranny of this place!" He bit on one of his cassettes.

Pops was in the driver's seat behind the wheel, shaking her head. "Not the masters' work stations," she let the two know as if it were a given.

Just then, she, the tape deck, the stand-floor lamp, and the rest of the appliances caught ear of a distant yelling. Back in the vents and walls of the giant brown machine, Toaster and Lampy were holding onto Air Conditioner as the three fell onto a wall incline and slid downward, backwards. They eventually cascaded off the edge of the wall, which was angled so that they wound up flying just over Pops, as well as Kirby's tall pole, and slamming into the electric generator, bringing them to rest in the motor cart with the entire group. That made eleven household appliances altogether.

"That was convenient," stated Wattson, trying not to sound stunned.

Pops saw no reason for questioning what had occurred. "Floor it!" she ordered Fan, who was manning the accelerator. The fan gladly pounded the pedal under her body, which caused the cart's tires to spin. Wattson hurriedly struggled and pulled the concealing gray canvas over everyone; before anyone could say "Wittgenstein" the cart blasted through the cardboard boxes and gas containers surrounding it, taking off to the nearest exit of the factory. It rocketed past some unpleasantly surprised human factory workers at their respective assembly stations, whipping them with wind and crashing on through a big flap door to the great _out_doors.


	14. Down Town

**Down Town**

* * *

><p>Finally outside the mechanistic recycling factory, the eleven appliances rode in their motor cart alongside a desolate industrial riverbank. When they had at last sensed that no humans were in the vicinity, they lifted the canvas that covered them and bunched it up to the side of the electric generator together.<p>

Once they were standing against open air, Toaster felt it necessary to tell the other five: "Whew, that was a close shave. Thanks a TON you guys."

"The second team came dashing to bat right when the chips were down," stated Radio. "Hah."

Fan turned to them both from her position on the accelerator. "Well we knew you might need some extra plugs, so we pitched in!" she disclosed with heart.

"Exactly!" the radio built upon. "A collaborative rescue ripe for the headlines!" Thereafter he shifted his undivided attention to Air Conditioner; no one could have predicted it. "And, what's this?" he added, housing sound forgiveness and admiration. "Astounded by the noble perseverance of the air conditioner, the commanding general has presented him with the honorary Soldier's Medal for which no man could even begin to – "

"I don't want your imaginary awards!" Air Conditioner pressed firmly, knowing what to expect from eons of cottage roleplay.

To that Radio retracted his outstretched antenna and chose to silence himself a tad. "...I see."

Back to his speculations regarding the other appliances' motives, Toaster asked a question to anyone listening, just to get it out there. "...So what made you decide to come along after all?"

"Eh," Tape Recorder replied from the cart's railing, "we should've given the masters a second chance before leaving town and, running away. You were right."

"N-now bear in mind..." Coffman stormed from the brake pedal, "I never gave my consent to any of this; they made me go by force, the conspirators!" He stuck his fork-arm at a bemused Fan, Wattson and Pops, though referencing his whole team. "Seeking out new masters is still suicide in _my_ eye."

Blanky was sitting mere inches from Coffman, and he had a belief to express. "I don't see anything wrong with it," he said.

The percolator had no aims in being bested by a "child." "Hm, that's cute," he amusedly scoffed, before he rotated himself to look Blanky close in the face. "And what did _your_ master do for you, little soap-bar blanket?"

Lampy stepped in to Blanky's defense. "Countless things!" That's when he had to mentally retreat and think. "...W-which would include fixing, using, uhh, playing..."

"Not returning to our cottage for three-thousand-plus days," Kirby established out of context, as if holding a grudge.

"Oh yeah!" the lamp remembered. "_AND_... oh." He should've known the vacuum would spoil his thought process.

"Huh?" Toaster turned and latched a high eyebrow.

Coffman seized this opportunity to gleefully bolster his case with pathos. "_Ahh_... so he left you at the old homestead did he?" the coffee pot rhetoricized. "And he never came back to pick you up? Heh, yes, sounds like a _real_ thoughtful and caring guy if I were a crockpot's pop."

"He DID go back," objected a drawling voice.

Every appliance stared back at the secluded Air Conditioner, who was sitting next to the tarp and generator.

Aware of his reactionary outburst, the air conditioning window unit gave the wood flooring a hard look and took in a breath. "Yeah yeah... the cat's outta the bag." Swallowing his false presumptions for good, he continued. "...He went back... a couple years ago, when you five skedaddled."

"He, did?" Lampy spoke when no one else would. He shook his head slowly, pulling it away. "Wow... that's, overwhelming!"

Radio immediately began to "swing dance" from side to side. "I knew it!" he trumpeted. "I knew it all the time – our master's got more spunk than even 'Damn Yankee,' crazier than Crazy Horse – why in all my worn years as a newsy newscaster – "

Kirby could not understand the reasoning behind such happiness. "Now HOLD UP for just one minute!" he interrupted with a thundering bark. "You're tellin' me we'd left the cabin, went out into the wilderness, almost sank in MUD, and almost got ourselves ripped apart for _NO REASON?_"

One brief pause, and Lampy was looking on the "bright" side. "_But_," he reminded the vacuum, timidly soft, "we found the City of Light!"

"Agh," dismissed the hostile Kirby, "who cares what kind of city it was! They're all the same!" He clamped on his mouth to deliver more force to that sentence.

Unsure how to react, Blanky quietly pondered a scenario of what could have happened those years ago. "So then... we didn't have to go through that spooky junkyard?" he wondered aloud. "The Master would've picked us up anyway?"

The blanket's poor innocence was the straw that broke the vacuum's back. Kirby next cranked over and directed his anger at his so-called leader in the bow. "...Toaster, how many times have you been gettin' us into these messes?"

Overcome by sudden emotional punches, the little toaster had to shoot up his defenses. "What, _ME_?" he counteracted. "I've just been trying to get everyone moving!"

"Yeah," Kirby cynicized, "right into trouble after MORE trouble!"

"Well I can't predict _everything _that's gonna happen! The rest of you oughta think for yourselves when it comes to making plans!" Toaster swathed heated glances at the rest of the group.

"We _do_ think for ourselves!" Lampy made clear as day. "But we also trust YOU!"

"And that's smack-dab where our problem is," resumed Kirby where he'd left off.

Toaster couldn't take any more of these self-perceived attacks. "Would you stop putting it all on me?!" For some reason he then threw his lever in the direction of the railing. "Jump off the cart and we'll see how each one of you does _WITHOUT_ my help!"

How bitter and uncalled for was that demand. Lampy, Radio, Blanky, and even Kirby were taken aback. The blow to each their individual egos had been dealt. But Toaster's was not excluded.

With no means by which to rewind time and subdue such rage, Toaster stood completely still in his spot; his eyes appeared frightful and knowledgeable of wickedness.

After a time's worth of quiet, he opened his mouth and forced out words in spite of fear. "...I'm, sorry guys."

Lampy, Blanky, and Kirby avoided looking at him; somehow Radio seemed all right.

A mute clock had been ticking, and the other appliances, after witnessing the event, were getting restless. "...Should we call it quits on the shouting match?" Coffman asked simply, expecting a "yes."

"Let's," Pops suggested at the wheel, "because we'll soon be arriving at a downtown intersection."

From the comfort of the passenger's seat near Pops, Wattson faced the main five to clarify. "In the City of Very Tall Towers."

All eleven of the cart crew noticed that there lay giant dark buildings of the city ahead – growing taller. Furthermore the sun was setting behind those buildings, shading them blacker.

* * *

><p>The city's streetlights had flickered on to signal the imposing nighttime, but while the sky had yet to burn out on its oranges and purples, a familiar red roadster zoomed down a street from a bird's-eye view. Rob sat at the wheel. He was a dangerous driver, if only for his being exhausted to the sophomore bone.<p>

He yawned somewhat irritably, eyes half open. "Huh, Chris... college algebra... yeah right..."

Swinging around a corner of urban clutter and inching on downhill, he drove his way toward a modest brick structure sandwiched between two larger business firms. A lit row of letters strung over a roofing shade that read: "Johnson's Repair House: For All Appliances and Domestic Ware." Rob pulled into a parking space in front, crossing the lines slightly. The inside of the shop remained illuminated by white lights, as could be seen through the clear glass shopping windows.

As the door to the shop opened, a bell above jingled. Two people, a middle-aged man and woman, glanced up from their appliance repair work at the main desk. Rob had set foot in the store, which featured shelves of fixed (and waiting-to-be-fixed) appliances, along with an elliptical rug on the floor and a pale carpeted cat tree.

"Hello!" greeted the woman warmly. "How're you doing this evening? You here to drop something off for a touch-up?"

"Oh no," Rob replied at first – until he recalled. "I mean YES, I _will_." He pointed somewhere using both his fingers. "I was going to a few days ago, but then... by some crazy mishap..." he rubbed the back of his neck, "I lost every single one of my appliances."

The woman's eyebrows scrunched automatically. "Every single one? You're not joking."

"What rotten luck son!" the man outcried.

Supposedly the professional mechanic he was, Rob sagged his shoulders and offered the floor a good gaze. "Yeah, well I was wondering if there was anyone I could, I dunno, talk to and organize a small search party or make signs to spread some awareness – "

Out of reflex the man strode from behind the main desk, to the redheaded kid, and clasped his hand in his. "You're talkin' to us right now!" He forcefully shook said hand. "Hi I'm Henry! Henry Johnson!"

The woman smiled off from the side. "And I'm his wife – pleased to meet you!"

Rob found his whole body to be oscillating from the neverending handshake. "And you too, heh! I'm Rob."

Mr. Johnson then finally released the kid's hand, but once he had done so, he wrapped his arm around Rob's shoulder. "Well now Rob, we can call the print shop across the block and see what we can do. You shouldn't have to shell out the big bucks for _more_ household works."

Rob, already sheepish, gave an uncertain answer to that. "My friends sure act like I should," he contemplated.

"Agh..." Mr. Johnson ground his teeth as he let go and returned to the desk. "It's those kinda people isn't it? They're quite the snobs I'll tell ya what; haven't had a fresh customer in days 'cause they won't bother to fix what they already _got_!" He threw a dirty rag from his pocket onto the desk's hard surface.

"Ah Hen, now come on," coaxed Mrs. Johnson, "don't scare the boy."

"N-no," Rob told her, "I hear you; I feel the same way." At the corner of his eye the bespectacled young man saw prowling on the floor a little white cat with brown fur patches, a pink collar, and bright green eyes.

"Well all right then." Mrs. Johnson folded her arms against her chest. "Now Jennifer," she said, watching her cat brush herself across Rob's pants, "you behave yourself; there'll be none of this struttin' of all your fur to get attention."

"It's fine Mrs. Johnson!" Rob ensured as he picked Jennifer up. "I like cats!"

"Ingrid!" exclaimed Mr. Johnson offscreen. "Quit makin' the boy uncomfortable!" This didn't help Rob much; he held onto a confused Jennifer from under her arms as he smiled on nervously.


	15. Far Too Lucky

**"Far Too Lucky"**

* * *

><p>The wheels of the cart rolled ceaselessly as the appliances traversed the urban environment, almost totally covered again by the canvas. They silently drove past some parked cars and trucks on the street until they approached an automated tollbooth that to them towered ever so much. Her dispenser beak sticking out from the tarp (so she, the driver, could see), Pops shook herself free from the covering and gave the tollbooth slot a coarse optical inspection. Next she jiggled, concentrated, shut one eye, and spit some change she'd saved out her dispenser. The coins gained upward momentum, and as they reached a high mark, they clattered into the slot. The tollgate rose before the appliances and allowed them to pass.<p>

While they continued to embark, the night view swept from one corner of an old block to the other whence they traveled. The multitude of dark closed stores and unkept flickering neon lights reflected the dreary mood of a toaster, his friends, but mostly the toaster.

Coffman was soon observed to be dangling open-ended off the right railing of the cart, playing watchman. He sniffed. "So to be absolutely clear," he went over with the main five dubiously, "we're on a wild goose chase for a store that you said _repairs_ broken appliances."

"Yeah!" Lampy "enlightened" him, tucked far beneath the covers. "That's the intention."

The coffee pot only retorted by cursing under his breath.

Pops arced over her seat. "Fan, Coffman, slow down the cart; we're approaching a bus stop!"

Instead of letting off the gas pedal, Fan kept on it, grinning in the face of adventure.

"She said stop, confound it!" Coffman shoved her off the accelerator and then slammed hard on the brake. In a matter of nearly zero seconds the cart ceased moving, courtesy of a parking gear. It stopped adjacent to the bus stop Pops spoke of, dimly lighted and marked with a bus sign. Pops, Fan, Lampy, Coffman, and even Wattson poked out from the tarp a little to uniformly peer in the bus stop's direction.

"You spot a phone book we could borrow?" the popcorn popper advanced.

"Yes!" Lampy and Wattson answered in simultaneous fashion.

Fan shrank back under the covers. "But it's underneath an... unpleasant, guy. An unpleasant-looking guy."

Why, pray tell, would she say that? Everyone else shrank, though not as much, when they noticed that on top the bus stop bench, where the coveted phone book lay underneath on the ground, sat a sleeping – and snoring – overweight man. He bore close resemblance to a nightmarish entity from the Parts Shop appliances' foretime.

After much internal deliberation, Coffman eventually took to the task and stepped his way up onto the cart railing. He puffed out his chest, of sorts.

"My friends, _I_ will go retrieve it," he proclaimed with a stiff mouth and raised fork. "For when push comes to shove... uh... hmm." His chest deflated and his fork lowered when he thought that perhaps this wasn't the best idea. But seeing as how he couldn't back down now, the coffee pot manipulated the fork, wiped his spout-nose with it, stared at the man, and shut his single eye painfully tight. He hopped off the comfort of the cart with a grunt, and Pops, Fan, Lampy, and Wattson watched.

After sneaking across the pavement and approaching the bus stop's glass enclosure on the sidewalk, Coffman crouched down in a shady corner under the wooden bench. The bench stretched a lot farther from his perspective than in reality, and the yellow pages seemed oh-so distant. The legs and shoes of the man also appeared to be much larger than they were.

Coffman started crawling toward the yellow pages which lay directly beneath the pudgy being. Periodically staring up to make sure no danger would befall him, the percolator kept clawing over the ground with his silverware arms. But then the man began to snore louder; he inadvertently leaned back and clashed against the glass behind him. This made Coffman jolt in terror and hit his head against the bench.

The four other appliances shut their eyes and turned away on impulse. They each let an eye open, and they dared to continue monitoring this brave soldier.

Though he was obviously shaking, Coffman stared one last time at the man and then directed his full focus to the phone book. Edging over carefully, he reached a quivering fork out to it once in close range and stuck the tines into the paper. Next he quickly dragged it toward himself. Lastly he used his other fork arm to hold the thick thing, and hauled the book out from under the bench. He gave wary upward glances here and there.

The phone book was thrown onto the floor of the cart, and Coffman climbed through the railing aboard. "Voila, scallywags!" he triumphed to the others as if bringing in priceless buried treasure.

* * *

><p>Later on in the night, the cart canvas was fully pulled off again, and as the tires kept their traction, one could see Wattson and Lampy in the passenger's seat, scanning the phone book with their bright yellow lights.<p>

"We _should_ be able to find the correct place under 'A' for 'appliance,'" Wattson murmured as he studied the pages.

"But remember it's a MAINTENANCE center we're lookin' for," Lampy tried to remind, studying just as hard and scratching his head.

"I'm fully aware of our prime objective," Wattson informed the other lamp. "...Move aside, please." He attempted to nudge Lampy away via his plug.

"_No_, I got it!" Lampy reacted by pushing back – not a good exercise in morals.

"You're not suited for this job!" fumed Wattson. "Move!"

Soon the two were grunting and shoving and tangling themselves up and etc.; to summarize, they were at each other's necks like a couple of bulb-faced rapscallions. Pops was drumming her prongs on the steering wheel, getting annoyed. Only a small matter of time passed before Radio stuck his antenna betwixt the two lamps and stepped in to break the fight.

"Up-up!" he pushed, halting them a moment. "The last thing we want is animosity between our own flesh and blood. Er um... yeah." (Rather wire and steel.)

Lampy and Wattson prepared to take another crack at each other when Radio used more brute force to separate them. "Listen," he strained, "Toaster always said we oughta put in our best efforts to get along – right Toaster?"

The radio checked behind himself at Toaster, who was sitting near Blanky, Kirby, and Air Conditioner way back where the whirring electric generator sounded quietly. His eyes closed, Toaster rubbed his chrome, not responding by any other means... no words, nothing.

Radio returned his attention to the lamps. "He's still a bit bummed." He took a good look inside the phone book to evaluate the problem at hand. "So whaddo we got fellas?"

Lampy put on a despairing expression. "Nothing, 'cause we just can't seem to find the place under 'maintenance center.'"

"Correction," Wattson fixed in reply, "the place under _which_ we'll find the _appliance repair_ center." This transformed Lampy's face back into one of anger.

"...Could it be both?" guessed Radio cluelessly.

Lampy cocked his left brow. "Huh?" He stared even closer at the book's print. Wattson retained an upright position as he rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"Are you fellows lost, perchance?" suddenly questioned an alien voice above.

This easily startled the three, not to mention the other eight. The motor cart came to a stop. After glancing about without any know-what to speak of, the three's eyes (and dial) drew up to a tall, overhanging streetlight. The night had blackened his metal body, but his eye-light glowed a functional white.

The streetlight was glaring at the appliances below. "I can give you directions," he offered calmly.

Lampy barely managed to form words from his minimized mouth. "...T-to an appliance, center?"

The streetlight nodded its hung-over shade as much as it could. "Johnson's – only three blocks due west, then a left onto Dindal Avenue."

Lampy smiled; and, pleased yet surprised, Radio didn't know what else needed saying. "...Thanks!"

"What's this about going to Johnson's?" inquired another aligned streetlight, causing Lampy's smile to disappear. Every appliance in the cart had now heeded the row of these stiff townsfolk standing along the right side of the street.

"They're probably trying to make their master happy," the initial streetlight reasoned to his neighbor next down the line.

The second one was bent to ask another question. "By themselves?! Why'd they need to go out this late an hour?"

"Well, ask _them_ the question," suggested the first one.

"I have a hunch," obtruded a third streetlight off the street's opposing left, "that their master should be taking them to the shop, not themselves."

"But what if the master doesn't care?" the second one asked once more.

"Yeah, what if he doesn't?" echoed the third. "They'll be sent to the scrapyard give or take two years."

"Shhh! They can hear you!" censured the first.

"No, it's okay. We already know."

To that remark the streetlights honed their perceptions on one appliance in particular: the toaster. Toaster was still sitting in the back of the cart rubbing his glazed chrome with his eyes closed.

Concerned for him and for the integrity of the group, Blanky crept near, greatly wanting to consult him. "Toaster?"

Toaster partially opened his eyes, but he granted the electric wool blanket no eye contact. His eyes closed again, and he sighed in distress.

Refusing to wait for a supportive answer any longer, Blanky instantly whipped around to the streetlights and outspoke himself. "Our master does TOO care about us, otherwise he wouldn't NEED us!" he yelled. "Which he does! So we're going to make our repairs easier for him!"

Neither the streetlights nor the other appliances could grasp what they had just heard, in a mere second that is. It wasn't until the first streetlight piped that the conversational ball could resume rolling.

"...Then you're a lucky bunch, I have to say," the first one surely concluded.

"Outdated but still employed?" the third brought to scrutiny. "Geez." She averted her shade away.

_As the appliances' motor cart started up again by the cooperative acts of Fan, Coffman, and Pops, the appliances themselves locked their view onto the road, in a subtle attempt to avoid the intensely melancholy glares of the streetlights they passed. One after another the streetlights began to sing; their lack of mouths didn't prove troublesome. Almost serving as the eyes of one unified, interconnected body, the streetlights appeared to all be the same; they were not unique on the outside, and they could each be passed without any acknowledgement whatsoever as to their trite existence. Unfortunately natural, their backs stood straight while their necks bent and curved downward, nonverbally begging the attention of at least the low pavement._

_While they contemptuously guided the appliances on their journey with their light, the bulbs of their eyes became a stream. They knew the deep city served as the junction for ongoing stories of hardship and despair. An ambulance sounded from the distance, and shortly after its lights flashed nearer upon its approach. The eleven appliances ducked undercover as it blared past them in urgency. That was a story best exempted from the setting._

_The streetlights were undeterred from their gloomy song. Either nature's fog or man's smog was visibly sinking into the cityscape by the time they cut to the ordeal of a sister machine: a spotlight. This spotlight was situated next to a majestical red carpet in front of a large community theater, littered with leftover popcorn and lost jewelry. She didn't pity herself the way the streetlights did; her eye-light turned off for the night, she instead sang of a shadowy and poorly dressed woman walking by her after the show, gathering food from the garbage cans, taking whatever there was to take. She admitted to her lack of knowledge as to why this mistress did not live the lifestyle of the other, wealthy masters and mistresses that would cross her path so often. _

_The eleven appliances were distracted so much by the music and their surroundings, that Pops had to swerve the motor cart to avoid hitting a fire hydrant. She knocked its cap awry nonetheless, and water gushed out into the street, creating streams. One streetlight's reflection was cast in a gorging puddle, and the streetlight blinked at itself before being reminded of an enviable "friend." He turned up and peered through an apartment window into a bathroom where a mirror hung on the wall. The lights outlining the mirror were on, and they had every opportunity to see their master's face as the master came to check himself. It mattered not what condition he or his face was in, only that he had come to those lights and put them to use, and that the lights could witness the fruit of their effort when the master finally grinned at his spruced-up self in satisfaction. The streetlight observing this sang out of pure unadulterated envy for those cozy indoor lights._

_Over inside a dark and empty makeup studio, however, beyond the stage and set, a row and two columns of mirror lights looked around from their permanent spot on their mirror and sang of their regrets for serving what they thought to be _self-indulgent_ Broadway actors and actresses. Eyeing the endless assortment of makeup kits, wigs, and powders on their table, they'd much rather work for the rats scampering in and out of the holes in the studio's walls._

_The different perspectives of any other lights were barred from the traveling appliances by the singing streetlights, although when the appliances started passing next to a foreclosed nightclub, they saw through the windowed and boarded wall a "gang" of colorful lights circling a round table and playing a machine's version of poker. The gang consisted of snake-like Christmas lights, an LED lamp, and a faceless lava lamp, representing an entirely unbeknown mechanical culture._

_To finalize the song, the streetlights, seeing a few cars drive beyond them without a word of gratitude, nonverbally demanded the appliances' attention by bending over off both sides of the street and attempting to block the motor cart from motoring any further. But they merely brushed the cart, for they were too rigid and weak. Still, like reaping fingers, they would not withhold their resentment until Pops and the panicked appliances hurried and swung onto Dindal where the rows of streetlights ended. Police sirens, barking dogs, and other city noises reverberated from afar. _

* * *

><p>In another city zone, a large yellow bulldozer was plowing through the streets and past many, many streetlights, clearly in a mad rush. He panted as he kicked up massive dust and debris and swooped every turn he made. His gravelly wheezes went to a high decibel level when he burst through an industrial door and into a familiar warehouse.<p>

"Excavator! EXCAVATOR!"

The excavator was currently occupied with stacking cardboard boxes in a neat and tidy display. Upon hearing her name she rotated to Bulldozer, a box in her big jaws.

"Say huh?" she muffled casually through said box.

Bulldozer continued to pant, he was so out of breath. "I heard... from the streetlight chain... a group of appliances are on their way to a repair shop! Ya think they're those ones we sent to the chops this afternoon?"

Excavator widened her eyes and stared away, _very_ gradually; and she dropped her box.

"Ex?"

In an instant Excavator flipped her eyes to him. "Where'd those lights find this out."

Now, Bulldozer hesitated to disclose more information, yet the surge of his call to duty was too great. "I-I can't fill in the load of it," he explained. "They've been spreading rumors here and there – ya know, heh heh." He tried to trivialize the news. "What chatterbytes!"

Her eyes lowered, Excavator grew angry, for more than one reason. "..._They'll_ tell me," she muttered hatefully. "Outta my way."

With a jerk of her boom she knocked her box stack down and tore by her bulldozer crony, ramming his shovel and scraping across as though he were an obstruction. Once her shadow had streaked over him, she headed outside into darkness. Bulldozer looked on with a sad, scared face, regretting where this would lead.


	16. A Hateful Foe

**A Hateful Foe**

* * *

><p>The long-fabled repair shop at last surfaced from the depths of the murky city. Johnson's Repair House. A wonder to behold... that is to say for the appliances seeking it. Covered mostly by the gray canvas but peeking out from all sides, Pops, Wattson, Lampy, Radio, Coffman, Fan, Tape Recorder, Blanky, Kirby, Toaster, and Air Conditioner were lugged to the top of a hill on their cart; they gazed down with a sense of awe at the starboard building lodged at the bottom.<p>

Wattson couldn't believe his eyesight. "There it is!"

"Let's park there and wait for somebody," said Pops from the wheel. Coffman, unable to cast doubt any further, released the brake, and everyone rode downhill. Once they arrived by the store, Pops parked along the curb away from a red car.

* * *

><p>Concurrently, Rob was still talking to the repair shop owners <em>inside<em> the shop. From an outside view, however, he was seen backing up toward the glass door and gesturing. Only a conversational mumbling could be heard as the aspiring mechanic waved to the couple and to their cat. Then the mumbling transformed into clear speech as he turned and opened the door, beginning to head out. But first he noticed the "Open/Close" sign behind him.

"You have a good one Rob!" wished the woman.

"Thanks, same to you Mrs. Johnson!" Rob replied. "Say uh, aren't you gonna be closing soon?" He upheld the "Open/Close" sign, which was set at "Open," and tapped it with a finger.

"Oh right," recalled Mrs. Johnson, scratching her cheek. "Just flip that over and lock the door with that doorknob switch, thank you."

After Rob flipped the sign over and turned the knob switch, he had another question. "Aren't you going home too?"

"You kiddin'?" interjected Mr. Johnson, teasingly but truthfully. "This _is_ our home! We were about to hit the hay for the night! Heh-heh!"

Rob's face went blank for a second before he responded. "Oh! Hah-hah, well, take care! And remember to call in for any lost vacuums, toasters, lamps... the works!"

"Will do son!" Mr. Johnson assured.

While the friendly couple went back in the shop, gathered their things and walked up a flight of stairs, Rob shut the creaking door, a look of minuscule dismay on him. He began stepping away from the shop, the cloudy night sky bearing over him from the ground's perspective. He pulled Chris's car key out of his pocket and flicked it around his dexterous finger as he headed for the car, parked on the left. Walking up to it, he was reaching to unlock the door when all of a sudden he felt his left foot slip out of his shoe. Easily distraught, Rob lurched his arms and shoulders, turned back, and found that the shoe had seemingly planted itself to the pavement. He kneeled down to pull it up. He soon discovered that underneath the shoe, a wad of chewing gum had been plastered. Groaning and creasing his brows, he used two fingers and hard focus and "expertly" pried the gum off.

As he straightened himself upward again, Rob's eyes led him to a strange, mysterious four-wheeled contraption sitting across from him and the car; it was covered with tarp and was parked perpendicular to the parking spots. "Hm?" Slipping his foot back in his shoe and rubbing it into place on the ground, he lumbered toward it.

A precautionary fellow, Rob converged to the cart and had to study it first, hands on his hips. No criminal stowaway seemed to be rustling under the canvas, so soon enough he yanked the canvas completely off and let it fall to the ground. Following that, his bespectacled eyes became as large as two Jupiters.

Eleven household appliances sat there inanimate; five looked exactly like his own – the toaster, lamp, radio, blanket, and vacuum; six did not. (Although the air conditioning unit happened to stoke some serious déjà vu.) The popcorn popper, fan, coffee pot, lampshadeless lamp, and tape recorder were of course new and unrecognizable.

Rob could do nothing but whisper: "I'll be..." And clench his hair with his raised hands too.

The next plan of action for him now was to alert the repair shop owners. Thus Rob turned his heel and commenced a most impulsive dash to the locked shop door.

"Mr. Johnson! MRS. Johnson!" he screamed at the top of his voice.

His flailing and shouting about, meanwhile, had almost seemed to lure a monster into the area. From the right of the street and up a hill, the shadowy, unruly treads of the Excavator tracked slowly and stopped. No other part of this machine stood visible, but there emanated from the bucket a booming, irrepressible metallic growl.

In trying to tug and force open the locked shop door, Rob finally surrendered and took the time to revert to more rational thinking. He stood back and stared at the doorknob, rubbing his head and pondering what to do. "Great," he huffed.

Behind him, a magnifying crumbling sound and a gigantic silhouette whooshed over him and the entire shop's front, right to left. Immediately, Rob looked up from the doorknob and swiveled around... to see a giant dirty excavator snatching his appliance cart in its hydraulic-thumbed bucket.

"_WHAT?!_" exclaimed Rob, in both shock and outrage.

The excavator beeped as it drove backward, carrying the cart away beyond the corner of the nearest building.

"Whaddyou think you're doing?!" Rob bolted after it with no intended delay. "You can't do that! _Put those down!_"

* * *

><p>Now behind the standing structures where civilians might still be lurking, Excavator drove out to a demolition site in which man's architectural craft had been freshly destroyed. Cinderblocks, bricks, roofing tiles, and various other wreckage composed the hilly wasteland. After setting track in this ominous terrain, she opened her orange eyes and roughly tossed the cart onto the uneven ground, causing all eleven appliances to tumble out in different directions. They groaned as they stirred, got up, and opened their own eyes; but Excavator's consecutive crushing of the cart under her tread quaked the earth and startled them to full-on alertness.<p>

Excavator glared down at the main six furiously. "What're you nutbolts doing back here?!"

The former Parts Shop members scrambled and huddled nearby, totally disjunct. Radio took a quick glance at five his pals on both sides. "Who... us?" he begged to question, sticking his antenna to himself. "Oh, maybe trying to _survive_?" He waddled forth a little, either being a courageous or foolish speaker. "Like little furry squirrels on the run from some wrenched prehistoric monstrosity?"

Excavator made a snarling face at him, until she heard Toaster's words of reproach. "...You... you scammed us by leading us off to a scrap factory, didn't you?"

"Hmph, sure seems like it, eh Toaster?" also entered Kirby's acerbic voice.

The irritated excavator turned her eyes to the sky and flung her bucket. "Oh SPARE ME! What else is a devoted citizen s'posed to do for this lousy town?!" She locomoted over to the side briefly.

"Ow." Lampy was still rubbing his head, attempting to catch on to the conversation. "Huh?" he uttered. "W-what were you doing?" He peered up at the towering vehicle, an innocent expression jointed.

"Takin' out the trash," Excavator responded flatly.

With that she stretched her boom forward and slowly began cranking and tanking a circle around the eleven watchful appliances, akin to the movement of a predator. "Now ya know," she started contemptibly, "I've been working my tailpipe off for many o' year... digging... hauling... wrestlin' solicitors on the line... and for the lowest life of me it's HYSTERICAL how _you_ all just sit around for someone to push a button to make ya do whatever." She stopped circling and faced the appliances all intense-like. "NOW AIN'T THAT SOMETHIN' SPECIAL."

Blanky whispered something to Toaster (whom he always situated himself by). "Isn't that what we're made for?"

Excavator just snorted at the inquiry. "If you're a wattless pipsqueak, maybe." Then she vented further. "But those masters just don't know _WHO_ to appreciate for hard work, do they?!"

"W-well whaddyou mean," objected Lampy in haste, "'course they know! They're the masters!" He paused afterward, awaiting an affirmation to erase any doubt.

See-holes a-widening, Excavator looked off into space. "...By... _gum_," she raised her boom, "NOW I've seen the light." Visibly unamused at that pun, she switched her piercing attention to the appliances she'd never seen before. "...Anybody _else_ wanna join these five pigeons' pigeonhole?!"

With Pops, Wattson, Fan, and Tape Recorder unwilling to peep a sound, Coffman partially broke from their huddle and replied: "Uh, not... particularly... I uhh... we..."

But then Air Conditioner scooted himself to the front and aligned with them, defending them from making stammering doofuses of themselves. "Hey," he openly chastised Excavator, "don't be givin' them this kinda heat for _YOUR_ problem!"

Excavator arose in surprise. "Dustbowl? Did I say you could talk?" Identifying him as a verbal threat, she caught on to his accent, grinned, and decided to mock it. "...Or," she rhythmized, "are you tryin' to take one up against the _MAN_?"

Air Conditioner raised an eyebrow in bewilderment and grave dislike. He looked over as Toaster jumped next to him. "L-look," Toaster said to end this dispute, "please, just let us go and leave us alone! What'd we ever do?!"

For a second there, Excavator merely bowed low and creaked her bottom jaw to and fro. Her eyes relaxed and half shut. "Tsk, nah, that ain't it Sunshine." She moved forward slightly. "The _real_ question'd be what you DIDN'T do, huh?" Her eyes got tense again. "You all got it MADE!" She swept her boom and stick through the air. For a brief moment she stopped and crouched, flashing a nasty glare. She began to charge, hell-bent. "...Buncha _useless TIN POTS_."

Her shadow stretched over the appliances; she was about to mow them down; but one angry voice caused her to put the stall on her treads midway and look behind herself.

"HEY!" Rob screamed as he ran. "You come back here and give me back my appliances! I've had it with people like you who think they can run off with other people's stuff!"

He grunted and climbed a mound of demolished wall not too far in the distance. Excavator observed him over there, still as a statue.

The appliances observed too. "Oh, no," spoke Toaster lowly. "He's getting himself into trouble."

"Ya think?" Kirby snapped. "He shouldn't even be out here anyway!"

Meanwhile Excavator eavesdropped on their mumbling and performed rapid eye movement in thought. She formed an open-mouthed smile when everything clicked in her socially advanced mind. "...Oh, so _he's_ your master, is he?" she drew. "Interesting, _interesting_." With subtle nods and a few nonchalant eerie hums, she pivoted atop her turn table and swung toward the direction of the Master. This led Toaster to start sputtering and glancing at his friends in absolute panic.

Rob was already having enough trouble maintaining his balance on the peak of some wreckage. Before he could lift his hands off the filthy cement and stand up straight, Excavator came by and bashed into the mound, shaking and knocking Rob off. He dropped sideways and then hit the ground just meters below, rolling and flipping along with showering debris. He was caught and settled in place by a ruffled, sheet-metal roof. Although he attempted to readily jump on his feet, he fell back on the roofing, gritted his teeth, and gripped his left ankle. This bought Excavator time to loom over him and prepare her attack.

Watching, Toaster sank his eyebrows. Unwilling to forsake the Master, he critically chose to break the rules of reality. He made an instant dart toward Rob. Lampy, Radio, Blanky, Kirby, and Air Conditioner saw this. No hesitating now. They "followed the leader" in an insane clamoring blitz. They were all out to rescue their master.

Before Excavator struck they and Toaster each gathered around the hapless Rob and pulled him away. Excavator then plowed into the metal roof with her deadly bottom teeth, but opened her eye upon realizing that she had only struck just that: metal.

The six appliances finally dragged Rob, the Master, to a safer place behind a brick wall. Toaster released his arm, Blanky his other arm, Lampy his leg, Radio his other leg, Kirby his waist, and Air Conditioner his shirt collar. Did these inanimate objects even know what they'd done? Even they were shocked at their action, Kirby moreso than anyone else.

Recollecting himself quickly, Rob threw stares at every last one of them and went: "WHA!"

He floundered all about in an effort to try and escape. "I'm BATS!" he shrieked. "Someone get me outta this, this... hallucination?"

"Master!" Jaw dropped, Lampy hopped in front of him. "C-could ya try calming down?"

Rob ceased struggling momentarily and adverted straight to his old orange lamp. "Are you _talking_ to me?!"

Seeing as how the lamp possessed clear facial features, the young mechanic took hold of the awestruck lamp's shade and inspected him via squinting eyes. His eyes soon unsquinted, and he shook his head incredulously. "This can't be happening. I gotta go!"

Rob whooshed around and tried to leave by crawling on his knees. But his electric blanket followed and latched onto his broken ankle (unaware that it was broken), out of desperation.

"But Excavator's still out there!" Blanky cried.

Rob winced on his ankle as he turned his head and cast Blanky a look. In the meantime the excavator mentioned was clamping her treads on the sheet-metal roof and tugging to get her teeth out of it. With a rip from the metal she finally managed to do so, and she tested her lower jaw by moving it around... before gazing in anger in the path where Rob and his appliances had fled.

"Excavator?" Rob asked Blanky next, perplexed. "You mean that psychotic man at the sticks?"

"Well not quite – " began Toaster as he walked near.

Unpredictably the giant construction/deconstruction vehicle busted through the "safe" brick wall, just inches from running everyone over. Yet the appliances and their master expended all their energy into retreating and crawling behind another piece of walling, as bricks crumbled above them. They grouped close together.

"She'll stop at nothing to squash us into next year!" exclaimed Radio – almost for the sake of impressing the Master.

"We need a plan FAST!" stated Lampy in auto mode.

Rob put a finger to his mouth and thought for a second. "...I'll have to shut it off."

He hoisted himself along and tried to climb some cement wreckage. Blanky and the others tagged behind.

Rob glanced down at them with understandable fear. "No you – whatever you are, stay away from me!"

But strangely unconceding to his wishes in ideas for the greater good, Blanky clasped his wool arms and implored: "But we've _gotta_ help! Please, have faith in us!"

After deeper thought Rob rose his brows and supposed there lay no use in arguing. He had no choice but to give in.

"Okay... I-I guess if you can help pull me up to the control station... I can stop it."

Lampy, not missing a beat of instruction from his master, nodded hastily. "That's doable."

So then Rob climbed a little higher and peeked through a hole in a bunch of brick rubble. He caught sight of the excavator as it whirled its boom and tanked toward the other appliances: the fan, coffee pot, stand-floor lamp, popcorn popper, and tape deck. Now _they_ were in danger.

"Here." Toaster helped push Rob's legs with his levers so that the dutiful mechanic could get to the top and climb down the other side of the rubble.

Excavator was staring irrationally at the five strange appliances, who stood much lower in the wreckage scape. In great fright, Fan, Wattson, Tape Recorder, and Pops dispersed abroad in a chaotic run, leaving Coffman by himself. The coffee pot shot glances right and left before flipping around and illogically attempting to climb the slope that cambered rockily behind. As he scooted his way up on his fork-arms, Excavator thrust her bucket forward and chomped into the slope. This quaked the slope enough to make Coffman slip down cinderblocks and toward the awaiting mechanical monster.

Tape Recorder, hopping to catch up with Fan, turned and saw Coffman at Excavator's nonexistent mercy. He gasped, yet directly following he lowered his eyes and concentrated on his left tape cassette, suspended by his film. He made a risky decision; he reached back and hurled the cassette, detaching it, at Excavator. It struck Excavator in the eye with a clang. Her eye shut in a split-second sting, and immediately, Excavator raised her boom, and opened that angered eye at Tape Recorder. He became engulfed in her shadow; he tried to retreat while facing her, but he unknowingly backed himself into a cement wall corner by error. He inched into the corner to the best of his ability, presupposing a chance for protection in it. Excavator bore her mouth down swiftly and mightily; she crushed him. His right cassette landed near Fan, Wattson, and Pops, who were hidden behind tiles and cracked ceramics. They stared at it; Fan stared at it, horrified the most. When Excavator's shadow draped over her, Wattson, and Pops, the three had no choice but to sink and watch above, too faint of heart to do anything.

A resulting opportunity was taken here. Balanced and supported by Kirby, Rob rushed to Excavator's treads at her blind spot, where Toaster helped lift him on top. On all fours Rob rode the forth-moving treads over to the control station just ahead. Lampy, Radio, and Blanky were keeping vigilance from a jutting sewer pipe lead behind. With all his strength Rob grimaced as he escalated into the station, propelled by only one foot. His tightly shut eyes opened to find, instead of a man he would have had a beef with, a celebrity cardboard cutout tremoring in the leather seat.

"_Huh?_" Rob should've been immune to surprise by now, but he wasn't. Disturbed, he nonetheless snatched the lifeless cardboard person and chucked it out the door so he could take his rightful place.

Excavator was just drawing near a fleeing Fan, Wattson, and Pops along a half-buried and flattened stairway, when she was all of a sudden jerked short. Rob sat in her station; he was holding onto a lever and had had the brake punched. He then reached for her ignition key, but after three pulls, no matter how hard he strained himself, he could not get it out. The only thing he could do now was randomly toggle with the levers – which he initiated due in part to pumping adrenaline – hoping to overwork and shut down the engine. Excavator fought against this out-of-whackiness and went haywire, spinning, stopping, spinning the other direction, and clashing her jaws into each other. (This undoubtedly allowed Fan, Wattson, and Pops to make their escape into the darkness.) Rob finally locked a lever in place, which functioned to lock a now-amazed Excavator's bucket, stick and boom in place. But Excavator despised being controlled, especially by a master. Angrily, she started shaking and using rawest of the raw power to get free. And Rob realized by peering outside the station that at her angle she was about to pull straight back... most likely to get at him. He ducked and jumped out of the station reactively, and Excavator slammed her bucket into her own station, smashing it in and sending glass shards flying. Rob fell square on Kirby, who quickly drove him to safety without complaint as Excavator metallically groaned in pain.

At the same time, Coffman had clawed to the top of his mound of rubble, panting. He gazed down at where one of Tape Recorder's cassettes lay on the cold ground. Air Conditioner dragged himself toward it slowly, looked down at it, then looked up at Coffman. Coffman looked at Air Conditioner, but afterward he worriedly peered off into Excavator's arena, where she was hunting down Rob and his appliances, fueled by a hankering for "revenge."

Excavator soon began to chomp at Radio through roads of walls, uprooted floors, strewn roofing, and general rubble. Radio would run for cover, get his hiding spot thwarted, and zigzag at top speed through more building wreckage, no longer wanting to engage in taunts. Right on his trail, Excavator would bash any obstacles apart with a swing of the bucket. At one point she stopped in frustration, raised herself as tall as forty feet and roared like a terrible lizard spewing carbon.

As cement and bricks periodically rained, a panicked Kirby was escorting a hobbling, petrified Rob. The two managed to rendezvous with the likes of Toaster, Lampy, and Blanky, who were busy being scared to death.

"The controls're a bust!" Rob had to yell to them all. "Get me to the engine!"

"Where is it?" asked Toaster in earnest.

"I'll show you!"

Just then Rob pivoted his body, and his hard breath became a gasp as Excavator gradually and painfully rotated herself around to face him and the appliances. Taking complete notice of this, Kirby shot glances and attempted to support Rob as he rolled and fled with Lampy and Blanky toward a high hill of demolished architecture. In his best intentions, he got too hasty and ended up letting Rob fall behind on his knees. But even as he kept motoring for it, the vacuum cleaner gazed back; and, in no way of excuse, he received the unconscious feeling that the toaster was most fit to manage the circumstances. Rob soon recovered and limped the opposite direction, and Toaster loyally followed to secure his ankle and balance.

Excavator seized time to choose who to target next, dizzied by her rage, and at first she headed for Rob and Toaster. She tracked them a short while under the demolished hill. But as Lampy, Blanky, and Kirby scaled that big hill to reach their haven, Kirby was struggling along. Upon jumping on top an obstruction in his path, a huge piece of solid walling, he accidentally knocked it over as he launched himself from it. It plummeted, down onto Excavator, pounding her bucket to the ground and nearly tilting her on the edge of her tracks. There was temporary quiet.

Rob and Toaster stopped moving and surveyed an open area of the demolition site.

Excavator removed her bucket out from under the crumbled walling. She opened her right eye. It appeared badly cracked, and her bucket damaged. Excavator slowly shifted her gaze up to Kirby – the perpetrator – and widened her slit eye, now intent on annihilating him.

Rob and Toaster kept surveying motionless until they spotted a night-obscured Radio far on the other side of where Excavator was located. He was standing atop a stack of pipeline and rebar; he waved his antenna and then rhythmically tapped it on a pipe below five times to attract more of Rob and Toaster's attention. Rob faltered over with Toaster from behind Excavator, who was revving her engine, and the two sneakily approached Radio's stack. Pretty high above them, Radio jabbed his active antenna twice at a flat wooden board that extended from the foam-and-cement mound on his right. Unsure, Rob glanced at the board, then to Radio, then back to the board, and eventually he pulled in the board's direction with Toaster's help.

Fully revved, Excavator charged forth and churned up the big mound of brick. Yet the mound was quite steep, and she soon found herself backsliding, accelerating, and bashing onto solid ground again. Meanwhile Toaster was buttressing Rob as they scaled their own mound. They made it to the board at a record pace.

Excavator tried to drive up the brick mound again. She failed a second time and fell flat.

Rob took Toaster under his right arm to relieve the appliance of duty; now on the wooden board, he was at first wobbly and off-kilter. But with the correct placement of his hand and knees on its surface, he pushed the board down and released it up until he built sufficient momentum and sprang from it, into the air. As Excavator revved to charge a third time the boy and his toaster landed on her back; they innately stuck themselves onto the dirty, yellow metal platform like magnets. Immediately after, Excavator charged with ferocious velocity, outstretching her boom, and commenced slugging up the brick mound, her treads forcefully tearing against the materials.

On Excavator's back Rob and Toaster maintained their position, no matter how hard they were shaking around, as they both grabbed the engine hatch and endeavored to pry it open. Luckily they succeeded at doing this, and so next they were to take a look at what lay inside. What they uncovered was what they expected: a large and complex engine. Toaster eyed Rob when he noticed the mechanic hesitating, as he put his hands in and got to work.

At the same instant, Excavator was working that engine to its limit as she persisted in churning up the slope. On the wide-open ranging top of the mound, Lampy and Blanky were seen whisking along, believing themselves to be in the clear. However, it didn't take long before Blanky stumbled and got his blanket body caught on a crag just underneath an angled roof. He labored to get free via tugging, but he could not.

He cried out into the distance. "_Lam-py!_"

Lampy screeched to a halt and tweaked around abruptly, his face smitten with terror. He flew back to Blanky while Kirby was zooming past them both. Lampy bent down and bit onto the blanket's wool, but painlessly so, and then tried to pull him out.

Excavator was rocking against the uneven rubble boundlessly. Stamped to her back, Rob focused hard on his business of "motor surgery"; he had opened the engine and was in the midst of rearranging its wires. He frantically messed with the red and blue wiring hanging over the fiercely spinning gears below. One moment, Excavator's treads ran into some big gaps, causing her to stagger severely. In turn Rob was yanked from his work; he let one of the wires he'd been holding slip into the gears, and it got loudly minced in a millisecond. The mechanic's quivering hands were on the verge of contacting the buzzing gears; he jolted them away in the nick of time.

Good news or no, Excavator finally ascended to the top of the mound, and she had three appliances, especially Kirby, in her sights. Her body banged down to a lateral position, and Toaster and Rob braced themselves; they nearly got thrown off. Afterward, when they acknowledged their stay on the vehicle, Toaster shifted his attention away from Rob and decided to check out what (or who) lay ahead in the wrathful excavator's path. He shakily walked to the front of Excavator's back, to her boom's cylinders, and took immediate notice of his friends: Lampy and Blanky. Lampy was trying to free the caught Blanky under a mounded roof from which the two were slightly sticking out, while Excavator was grinding at them. Toaster's eyes grew wide.

Suddenly Kirby came into view, bounding to Lampy and Blanky after all that time. However, he went on and off, continuing and pausing toward the two in trouble; he just did not know what to do.

Then the three heard Excavator's roar overhead. Excavator lunged forward, but hawked over Lampy and Blanky, seizing an alarmed Kirby in her jaws instead.

Rob still held his post in the engine hatch, determining what wires needed to be eliminated. He gripped a stock of wires in both hands, yet could not manipulate them in any way; they were too short. That's when he let them go and reached further into the engine's interior, unearthing an oily tube in his palm. Right then and there, an objective etched.

Excavator began the vile act of crunching Kirby between her teeth. Moreover, she had tracked partway onto the roof of Lampy and Blanky; they were about to get flattened under her treads.

Rob put on a sorrowful face, closed his eyes, and turned away. To fulfill his objective, he took the oil tube and jammed it smack into the gears of the engine – that marvelous machine. Stuck for a brief second, the gears suddenly spun loose out of place, gyrating wildly, drowning in oil; and with a mere spark from the misplaced gears' friction, the engine exploded.

This proved more than detrimental. While still crushing Kirby, whose pole was now horribly bent out of shape, Excavator felt an overpowering paralyzation. As she halted, her pupils shrank into specks. Try as she might to firm her jaws on the mangled vacuum cleaner, time and time again her diminishing strength failed her, and pretty soon, she lost her grip. Kirby fell from her agape jaws. The wires attached to her boom-and-stick bushings ruptured in white flashes and she, step by step, retracted her boom and spasmed out of control.

Toaster struggled to get a hold on Excavator's back, and looked below at the roof being subjected to Excavator's heavy treads. Lampy was holding Blanky underneath him by an enwrapped cord as the treads pressed them ever lower. The little toaster jumped his whole chrome body around to face the Master; then he reverse-jumped to the blanket and lamp. When push came to shove, friends and masters were of equal importance; but a course of action had to be sought, unless everyone be permitted to perish. So with all in mind, Toaster tottered to the very edge of Excavator's quaking shell. He leaned out as far as possible, stared up at Excavator, and waved at her weakly with his outer lever. Excavator, who was malfunctioning and losing command over every fiber of her being, perceived Toaster's motions and stared him back, her eyes and mouth opened to their limit. Toaster then ceased waving, having gotten her visual regards. Had this toaster just sabotaged her, and did he now have the gall to wave her farewell to the fiery pit? Excavator increasingly delivered him an expression of unfathomable hatred. Using the last bit of her power, she shut her eyes and cranked herself up and backward. Her raised treads let pressure off the roof, saving Lampy and Blanky from a compacting fate. Toaster wasted no time in running to the Master as Excavator's back tilted over, meaning to crush the hitchhikers. He helped pull the all-too-wary Rob out from the blown engine, and the master plus his appliance had no choice but to scramble off as their surfacing angled perilously downward to the far, far bottom of the wrecked slope. They escaped right as Excavator made her free fall. Her degenerating metallic frame creaked its last groaning creak as she crashed with a violent _BOOM_.

The exploding, racketing noise died down. On the mound's slope, Toaster arose from some rubble and opened his eyes. He was dented and dirty from the rough landing. One look over and he saw the Master lying bruised next to him, face hidden, and hands still clenched. But Rob didn't seem like he was going to be moving anytime soon. Lower, on the ground, the appliances Pops, Wattson, Fan, Coffman, and Air Conditioner cautiously emerged from torn walls and other wrecked structures. They appeared a little beaten-up themselves – an aftermath of the event. Excavator lay sprawled on her back, having carved a ditch from the impact, dead at the foot of the mound, her hydraulic thumb halfway detached, streams of smoke rising, and her ragged treads whirring from loud to soft, down to motionless weights. As the view zoomed out from the demolition site, Henry and Ingrid Johnson, the aidful repair shop owners, were soonafter seen walking over the wreckage and entering the perimeters of the black night zone – destined to be transformed into one of dawn.


	17. New Functions

**New Functions**

* * *

><p>Come the rising of the sun in the blue sky, a bird was sitting in a nest wedged between two tree branches near an open window. Not a minute passed before a baby hatched underneath its mother, who promptly stood on her two feet and looked down harboring joy and excitement. The father bird soon flew to the nest and perched so he too could glimpse the emergence of new life. On the interior side of the window, a vase brimming with flowers sat on a table next to a white bed. The Master lay on that bed; bandages had been wrapped around his head, and his glasses were off, accompanying the vase. Asleep for a while, a voice managed to stir him.<p>

"Rob? _Rob?_ Can you wake up?"

Rob came to, and after rolling his dazed cranium in circles, his brows relaxed and he opened his eyes to see Chris sitting in a chair by him, leaning over.

"Ugh." He rubbed his face with one hand. "...What – where, where am I? Where did I go?" (Not likely to heaven.)

Chris visibly saddened and almost hesitated to answer. "...To the hospital."

"Really?"

"Afraid so."

"Wow." Rob stared down at his enveloped self. "...And where're my appliances at?"

Chris could tell where this conversation was going; she didn't like it. "Your appliances?"

"YEAH!" Rob shot up from his bed, ignoring any headaches he had presently. "Oh man Chris, my appliances, you should've seen them, they were... talking to me, trying to save me and help sabotage this wrecking machine! Also they were – "

Quick as a flash he leaned back and retraced his thoughts; this was a sane human being he was talking to here. "Ahh..." he finally sighed, "but I don't suppose you'd believe me, now would you?"

Chris twisted her mouth and shrugged her shoulders. "_Probably_ not."

Gaping into empty space, Rob endeavored to assess and rationalize this gnawing memory deep in the inner workings of his mind. "...I guess it must've been some whacked-out dream I had."

"Right," Chris said without another word on that matter. "But anyway," she moved on, "I've got good news! Your things are being spiffed up at Johnson's Repair House! Wanna go an' get 'em?"

"Do I ever!" Rob breathed eagerly. He'd started to scoot off his bed when he realized that his left foot had been bound in a suspended cast. He hissed in short-lived agony.

"No wait!" Chris exclaimed too late, arising and outstretching her arms. She, coupled with the pain, made Rob stop what he was trying to do.

Chris placed her hands on her hips. "Lemme fetch you some crutches."

Rob found that to be a splendid idea, no doubt, so he slumped back down on the bed. He stared at the ceiling and let out a sigh. "Okay."

* * *

><p>That same morning, inside the Johnson family's wholesome repair shop, Mrs. Johnson was finishing a fine polish of a certain sunbeam toaster on the main desk. Jay stood off to the side, one hand in his pocket, the other twirling a detached cord, which began to mesmerize him. He and Mrs. Johnson were both snapped out of their tasks when they heard the jingling of the bell above the door. Jay took a step forward.<p>

"Rob, buddy!" he greeted, his optimism coming on a little strong. "How're ya feeling? A little better?"

Rob entered the shop on a pair of crutches, head bandage removed, with Chris right behind him. The redheaded young man was concentrating very hard on walking in this fashion; his once-again-bespectacled eyes were focused on the floor.

"Yeah, a little," he returned.

"Well this'll make you feel TONS better!" Jay made a sprint to Rob and showed him around, arms and hands flourishing. "_Ta-dah!_"

He displayed unto Rob a low shelf on a wall, where a polished radio, popcorn popper, air conditioner, coffee pot, blanket, stand-floor lamp (now donning a shade), fan, and desk lamp were lined up all in a row. Mrs. Johnson propped the toaster on the far end. Jennifer the cat meowed from the prestige of her carpeted cat tree.

"Wow," awed Chris as she came in. "They sure can shine, I'll give 'em that."

Rob traced a good long look at the appliances – even those he never recognized or owned. "Yeah this is all really nice, don't get me wrong," he started, "it's just – well, where's the vacuum? It was the one that needed the treatment."

Mr. Johnson appeared from Rob's other side on cue, and motioned for him upon catching his attention. The man exhaled. "Follow me."

So Rob did follow.

* * *

><p>With a heavily dented and contorted pole, Kirby was carried out from the door behind the main desk, and then he was set down on the tiled floor, its surface smothered with bits of dirt. Mr. Johnson switched him on and gently swept him across the floor to do the job he had once lost. A few seconds ticked by before he was switched off and pulled back, revealing a floor that had been <em>partially<em> cleaned; but bits of dirt still remained.

"See here?" Mr. Johnson explained, holding the vacuum and tilting it from its underside. "We replaced the old power cord with a new one to get the motor running right, but it'll only go twenty percent the capacity it used to. That's all we could manage to squeeze outta it."

Rob put a finger to his mouth, disappointed and contemplating. "Only twenty percent," he repeated to himself.

"...Well?" questioned Jay next to him. "Should we get rid of it then?"

"It won't be enough to clean _your_ dorm room anymore," mildly joked an approaching Chris.

"...Yeah, well," Rob kept thinking. "Let's go ahead and take those other appliances to the car. We need to figure out what to do with them."

He crutched away with his two friends, who plucked what they could carry: the stand-floor lamp, fan, popcorn popper, and coffee pot. Mr. Johnson lifted Kirby and set him near the shelf, where Rob's appliances and the air conditioner lingered for the time being.

Once Mr. Johnson had disappeared through the back door, Toaster and the rest reanimated.

"I'm sorry Kirby," Toaster regretted, facing the vacuum cleaner along with Lampy, Blanky, and Radio. "They did their best."

No answer was heard at first.

"...Kirby?"

"...Actually," Kirby told Toaster, a thoughtful glaze in his eyes, "the more I think about it, it's not all that bad."

The toaster couldn't comprehend this. "...W-whaddyou mean?" Nor could the radio and blanket.

"Maybe this'll gimme the chance to take a break for once." Kirby paused to finalize what he said, and he moved his damaged pole. Next he shut his eyes in a fluster and stared downward. "...In any event I'll be fine."

"Are you _sure_?" Toaster doubted, aware of Kirby's arch-work ethics. "I don't know..."

"No... no..." intervened Lampy in opposition to Toaster, "I _really_ do think he's gonna be okay!"

"Really?"

"Yep, really!" The lamp nodded.

Toaster glanced away into space, brow cocked. "Huh."

Kirby suddenly got a tad irritated, as he got with know-it-alls in general. "And who are YOU to tell me how I'm feelin'?!"

Reacting, Lampy flailed his cord and shook his head, unable to contain himself regarding his "hypothesis." "NO, no, you'll see in a hundred nanoseconds precisely what it is I'm thinking!"

The old vacuum gave up trying to process Lampy's utterances. "...All I can say is it better not be another insane idea."

The appliances went to inanimate mode when Rob, Jay, and Chris walked into the shop again. Rob was in the middle of making his decisions, of little consequence to his friends but of dire importance to the machines.

"I guess Jay and I'll put that lamp, coffee pot and popper in the dorm's lounge cave," he said. "They'll be good for parties."

"All right," Chris acceded. Then she asked _the_ question. "And what about buying a new vacuum cleaner?"

"...Ya know what, I think I'm gonna keep the old one."

Hearing this but not believing it, Jay flipped out at his roommate. "You... what?! Why?"

Kirby found himself blooming his eyes; Lampy turned to him, smiled, and winked discreetly. The dim bulb happened to know the Master pretty well.

"Don't ask, just trust me," Rob instructed. "I'll make sure to find a proper place for it... like the lounge cave's trophy cabinet for instance!"

Jay gawked and got one thing straight in a flat tone: "You want to put a _vacuum cleaner_ in our trophy cabinet."

"Good grief." Chris palmed her face, almost out of embarrassment.

Yet Rob didn't care – he was as giddy and happy as one could be. "Thanks so much Mr. and Mrs. Johnson!" he called to the repair shop owners upon waving.

"...OH," Mrs. Johnson responded in surprise from the desk, "you're very welcome!"

"Hah, if you mean it!" Mr. Johnson laughed from the back, in perplexion.

"Hey now, and come to think of it..." Mrs. Johnson suddenly pondered aloud, finger to her lip, "since we could use more preservative folks like yourself, you mind tellin' your friends NOT to throw away perfectly repairable appliances? We'd appreciate the help, very much!" Jennifer hopped on the desk and smiled.

Somehow Rob became even more giddy. "Oh absolutely!" He swept his hand through the air. "I'm _ALL_ over it." And he gave Jay and Chris a cocky glance.

"...Rob," Jay remarked suspiciously, eyes squinted. "What're you looking at?"

* * *

><p>Now with a trunk chock-full of appliances, including a window unit who was sticking out halfway, Chris drove her car through the industrial city and zoomed toward Rob's, hers and Jay's college, which featured a big inviting "Welcome" sign and a beautiful green campus. But the three college kids weren't going there; instead they whooshed on by, heading toward the city limits – to a quieter rural area. Near a freeway on the grassy countryside, Chris parked the car neatly at a lone gas station. A blue pickup truck was sitting there, running its engine on the edge of the gravel road.<p>

"This the rendezvous point?" Chris confirmed with Jay.

"Yep," Jay answered as he unbuckled his seat belt between her and Rob. "My chaperone's right over there waiting for me!"

The eager dude squirmed around a ruffled Rob and leapt out the car without using the door, yanking his suitcase along.

Rob placed his arm on the car door's rim to go over a couple things. "Now," he began, "are you _completely_ sure you have everything for your trip? Supplies, books, important papers?"

Jay rolled his eyes to the sky and tensed his fingers into claw formations. "_Everything_ Rob, I've got _everything_! Sheesh!"

"Just checking."

"Yeah, I gotcha." Jay understood that his roommate meant the best for him. Then he moved on. "NEW MEXICO HERE I COME!" He galloped to the pickup truck a short distance away, waving his arms like a madman. An arm from the truck's driver's seat window waved back.

"HI! WHAT'S UP?!" Jay hollered.

Meanwhile Chris was helping Rob step out of the car and get grounded on his feet with the crutches. Once out, however, Rob had more worriful inquisitions he wanted to share.

"I hope nothing fell out back there," he said as he switched gears to the car's trunk and started hobbling to it.

"Nothing fell out," sighed Chris irately as she followed. Together the two approached the open trunk and gave it a close inspection. All the appliances were present one by one.

"See?" Chris stretched forth a hand to show him.

Rob peered closer below and adjusted his glasses. "...Wait a second."

He found that the bulky air conditioner was tipping over the edge of the trunk, about ready to fall out.

"Now what am I gonna do with this cooling unit?" he leapt to thinking. "Our facility's already got central air conditioning."

Chris merely shook her head side to side with closed eyes; she shrugged briefly too. "It's whatever you wanna decide."

"If the main system broke down, we could always find the right-dimensioned window maybe..."

From nowhere Jay's voice cascaded far and wide. "_HEY!_"

The very source of that voice journeyed hither, rejoining Rob and Chris's company at the trunk. "That cooling unit?" Jay panted to Rob as he pointed at it. "They could seriously use one of those at the astronomy lab."

"They could?" queried Rob.

"Yeah, they're still getting things started down there, what with all those budget cuts. I'm tellin' ya, they are _desperate_ for some cooling equipment right now."

"Oh! Well if it helps, feel free to take it along!"

"Ah," Jay gandered another appliance in the trunk, "and they could use the fan here too!" He nabbed it and studied it.

"Fantastic!" Rob unknowingly wisecracked. "Then you're all set huh?"

"Almost! Just gotta buy me a few snacks – you put the stuff in the bed of the truck, okay?"

With that Jay sped off again, dropping the fan. Luckily Chris was there to catch it before it hit the ground.

"Gee – okay!" she exclaimed. Giving the desktop fan in her hands a stare, she lowered her gaze at her boyfriend watching. "Won't you be glad when _he's_ gone."

"Eh, it'll be like a small burden off my back," Rob admitted lightheartedly. Chris twisted her mouth and smiled to that.

* * *

><p>Approximately one minute later, Chris was carrying the heavy air conditioner in her arms and plunking it down next to the fan in the bed of the pickup, which had its tailgate door reared. After checking that everything was a-okay, Rob turned and tried to hop his way over to the gas station by himself. He apparently couldn't handle the crutches so easily on his own.<p>

Chris saw him struggling and gasped. "Rob! Wait up!"

She ran after him to the station's entrance. "Don't stumble over there!"

Seeing as how the coast was for the moment clear – devoid of humans, including the chaperone – the remainder appliances hopped down from the red roadster's trunk and made one last trek across the gravel road. They reached their destination: the back of the pickup truck, where Fan and Air Conditioner resided, wishing to say their goodbyes.

Before they were prepared to do so, however, Toaster and the other four turned and gave witness to the acts of Coffman, Pops and Wattson. Pops and Wattson were digging a hole in the gravel, and Coffman, bless his coffee, had held onto one of the tapes of Tape Recorder. He placed it into the hole, and Pops and Wattson covered it back up, leaving a mound. Coffman patted the mound with his fork-arm.

The three of them drifted their eyes up to the main five. Coffman attempted to expound on this curious practice. "It's a... master's burying ritual... as it were."

A smile lightly appeared on Toaster's face, and he sent them a respected nod. It became so quiet that the midday breeze could be heard brushing against fields of grass.

Having observed this odd ritual from the truck, Air Conditioner glanced over to the right at Fan; she was sniffing and wiping her eyes, watered with tears.

The A/C knew death, not once, but twice. He thought silently, and then he urged himself to say a few words; but it was difficult.

"Now, come on, don't be acting like that," he criticized her. "We're headin' off to a _desert_. They're really needing us, and you're gonna be put to some good use."

Fan sniffed in response, also forming an angered expression as she seethed: "I _know_."

Taking a shameful breath, Air Conditioner regressed to a wordless state and turned his eyes elsewhere. That's when Toaster ambled up to the truck, along with the whole appliance team.

"...I think he's meaning to tell you," the toaster clarified to the fan, "that you're not gonna be going out on this alone. At least not when you've got _him_ around!" He pointed his lever at a certain someone.

Fan perked, and started lifting her head. "True."

The toasting appliance glanced at the cold window unit warmly. "That sound about right?"

Air Conditioner made a seemingly indifferent affirmation. "Yeah, whatever you say Toaster." Though Fan by that point could sense his sincerity; so, she playfully headbutted him, earning his highest of eyebrow raises.

"Gotta hand it to ya both," opined Radio, "with you having each other's tail ends no hardbitten outlaw'll dare draw his Colt Peacemaker at the likes of the Chill Crew on any given day."

"Hmph!" Kirby huffed approvingly for once.

"Make sure to say hi to your new masters for us!" dearly requested Blanky.

Still eyeing that blanket, Fan leaned over and inquired in a low tone to Air Conditioner: "How are we supposed to say hi to them?"

"He's full o' fluff," came Air Conditioner's reply.

"Oh..." She still didn't know what he meant.

The ten appliances would have certainly chatted longer had they not caught sight of one of the masters. It was Jay. They went to lifeless mode immediately as he skipped to the pickup and threw his gigantic luggage in the truck bed behind the fan and air conditioner. Remarkably, he didn't see the other appliances on the gravel as he munched his nachos and popped through the door to the passenger's seat. Once inside he slammed said door, whose window was rolled down.

"I'm outta here," he declared between chews. "C'mon what're you waiting for," he told his chaperone in the driver's seat, "let's burn rubber!"

And with that the truck was shifted into gear; and, after kicking up plenty of dust, it loudly zoomed away. The appliances came to life on the double; how could they not.

Fan and Air Conditioner appeared one last time from the back as they distanced. Fan whip-waved her cord like a maniac. "See ya! Wouldn't wanna _BE_ ya!" she shouted. Air Conditioner smirked good-naturedly from the side of his grilled mouth.

Pops, Wattson, Coffman, Toaster, Lampy, and Blanky all smiled and waved them on, as that mismatched duo ricketed over a hill into the country, disappearing with the dust trail.

The remaining eight then had to stop what they were doing, glance to the right at the sound of creaking crutches, and rush back to the trunk of the red car as quickly as possible. They had no intention of being left behind.

Rob and Chris were coming out to see Jay off, but all they encountered were dust clouds and the sound of the revving of the pickup truck far far away.

Rob should've known this would happen, somehow, but he nevertheless stared in disbelief.

"...He didn't even say goodbye."

Chris threw her arms to disregard this incident. "Pssh, forget about Jay the loony! Let's go."

* * *

><p>And so, the doors of Chris's car shut, and the engine started. The car's radio, too, was turned on, playing music, and Chris swung the car in the opposite direction of the pickup's and drove from the gas station back to the city.<p>

In the open trunk, the appliances were finding themselves shuffling around against each other and trying to settle, granted the limited space made available by three other bodies and now, Rob's pair of crutches. Though everybody eventually found a comfortable spot, this situation provoked a cracked exclamation from Lampy.

"Merciful Davy it's crowded!"

"Sho-cker," snooted Wattson. Pops took a weird look at him and then knocked him upside his new shade.

"Yes there'll be plenty of time for squabbling and biting retorts later," Coffman set. He leaned over to Blanky whence he added ticklingly: "...Ironic coming from a scoundrel such as moi."

Picking up on that Radio had an announcement to make, naturally. "NOW we oughta be fixin' ourselves on giving a warm, _toasty_," he elbowed Toaster with his antenna, "welcome to our three draftees over here who each suffered a psychological discrepancy and lived to tell about it!"

"Hip-hip HOORAY!" Blanky cheered coinciding a swoosh of his wool-arms.

Coffman sniffed proudly yet modestly. "Thank you very much." Pops and Wattson didn't seem quite as pleased.

"Well thank _you_ for sticking with us to the end of the whole trip," Toaster told Coffman, housing a sunshining expression.

"Trip my dial," objected the radio, "it's never a trip. A grandiose escapade maybe, full of hazardous obstacles, riveted with near-death experiences too much to write home about, too much for Hearstian yellow journalism to reconcile, obstreperous appliances continually defying the laws of the elite..."

"It's _just_ a trip, Mr. Loudmouth," Pops sharply finished for him.

Lampy stared still and agape. "My sentiments exactly," he muttered. Kirby exhaled by blubbering through his big mouth, tired of hearing such nonsense. (Or was it nonsense?)

Radio curbed his zeal and backed down as needed. "All right..." he began to resolve, "I'm putting forward a solemn vow never to again let myself get carried away."

Toaster calmly, lovingly teased him in return. "Some vows were meant to be broken Radio."

But Radio only got paranoid from this. "NO I'm serious!" he blurted in defense. Everyone else started to chuckle.

"Don't be taking everything I gab with a grain o' salt!" he pleaded. He fidgeted and made exaggerated leaps and gestures. "I'm speakin' from the soul here; it's very delicate; it could splinter in the blink of an eye!"

His speaking soon became none but a small and hopeful chime as Pops reached up and closed the trunk, and as the car disappeared down a street hill into the city. The view then escalated to tremendous heights, straight above the countless business hubs and skyscrapers in the horizon. From wherever living beings, intended to live or no, bled to the suffering of their slots in this machine one calls time and another space, they could always find a will waiting in legends, regardless of their world frailty. Much more was there to be accounted for beyond. The clouded sky shone over civilization, beaming rays of heavenly light.

* * *

><p><strong>~The End~<strong>


End file.
